Keywords the Albatross of the Webmaster

If you were to ask ten different successful webmasters about the relevance of keywords and how to effectively utilize them, I can almost guarantee you will get ten completely different answers. The ugly truth of the matter is that what applies today, may not apply tomorrow. The search engine algorithms, especially Google's, changes too frequently to stay abreast of.

Keywords and their relative importance have been with us since the first meta tag was conceived and there is no sign that keywords are going away in the future. The importance fluctuates as algorithms change, but that is due more to HOW the keywords are used and WHERE they are placed within your page.

Keyword usage can be broken down into four categories:

• What has always worked well for you
• What has worked to some degree
• What has not worked at all
• What has hurt your ranking

The elusive fifth category, missing from the above group, is What I have not tried that will net even better results. That is the one we want to find and implement.

The first rule in keywords is to make sure your keywords match your content. If you stuff, spam, or think you can fool the indexing spider into believing your music download site is about mesothelioma, you are kidding yourself and targeting your web site for the supplemental results pages if it gets indexed at all. Simply put, do not try it.

Your content text needs to be built around your keywords. Many people forget what keywords are supposed to do: They are supposed to tell the search engines what your site is about. There are not designed to lure unwary visitors to your page just to show them ads.

Keywords should also not be limited to just your meta tags; they should be used in headers, in your content text, in links, and even in folder names for sub-directories. You should make them bold or italicize them when applicable so they stand out from the main text.

Below are some good rules of thumb to consider in keyword usage:

• Put all your keywords in your meta tag for keywords
• Use a keyword in the title tag of your site
• Use one or more in your description tag
• Your H1 statement should always have a keyword
• Any H2, H3, or H4 statements should also contain a keyword
• Bold statements like paragraph or section titles should have a keyword
• Sub-directories should contain keywords
• Html page names can also use keywords

The last two items on the above list warrant an additional explanation. Let's say you have a site that gives information on seo (just to pick a random example). Maybe you have a page on keywords like this article. The address might look like this:

www.yourdomain.com/kw.html or www.yourdomain.com/key.html

A better way to optimize this would be be create sub-directories and then this path:

www.yourdomain.com/seo/articles/keyword-usage.html

Now, with just the path to the page, you have used some great keywords without spamming or stuffing. The title of the page being keyword-usage.html is far more likely to get indexed by the search engines than simply kw.html or key.html but many people still use those simple, easy to type page names.

Another point to consider is how many keywords is too many? Most search engine spiders now only give weight to the first three or four and simply ignore the rest. So if you stuff your meta tag with fifteen to twenty keywords, you are spinning your wheels. I know there are still many sites out there that check your meta tags to see how good they are. Do not trust them because they are based on old, out of date formulas that are no longer applicable. I would use only as many as you need to effectively convey the essence of your web site, no more.

A good rule of thumb for this is to do your keyword meta tag LAST on each page you build. Write your content, place your images, add your links, and THEN write your meta tag based on the specific content of that particular page. Do not write a standard keyword meta tag and then just copy/paste it to each of your pages. Give each page its own unique keywords, in order of importance from first to last.

Last, but certainly not least, read the webmaster forums and blogs. My wife reads the newspaper each morning while I read the webmaster forums to find out changed while I was asleep! If you stay current with all the seo trends, you will never have to pay someone else to optimize your site again.

John Leininger is CEO of Net-123 Web Development in Lexington, South Carolina, and has been in the web design and hosting industry since 1999. Net-123 offers custom web site design, hosting, marketing and advertising, turnkey web sites, logo design, digital photography, and custom video projects.

Affordable Web Sites for Small Businesses

http://www.net-123.com