Keywords & Phrases

Once a website has been developed, spiders determine a website's relevancy based on the keywords and keyword phrases that appear on your pages and throughout the site. In short, they describe the core topics of that particular page.

Keywords form part of what is known as meta tags. In general, they are inserted into the "head" area of your web pages and are generally not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Meta tags are used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Spiders, however, are definitely interested in this information.

To view the meta tags on this and any other site, click on the menu item “View” and then select the option “Source”. This shows the html code for the page. The first page is the code that Web Informers© uses to ensure that our own website is ranked with the search engines.

Points are awarded or subtracted based on such factors as how many times a keyword is repeated, where the keywords appears, how it is used, and how keywords are positioned in relation to one another.

Sites can also be penalised for improper use of keywords. For example, sites that repeat a keyword in the hope of ranking higher, will inevitably find that they don't. So, Web Informers© will advise on how best to optimise the use of keywords through a balanced approach. The trick is in figuring out what keywords to use, were to use them, and in what proportion your primary keywords should relate to the rest of your site's content - without getting in trouble.

Certain keywords, known as ‘stop words’ will stop a spider dead in its tracks. They are generally of a pornographic nature so not a concern to most businesses. Filter Words, on the other hand, are words that are so commonplace that they have little or no value. Examples include words like "a, the, and, or." These are ignored to save disc space on the search engine server. However, words that form phrases such as "home page" might also be considered filter words.

The process of selecting keywords should begin with an open and honest evaluation of what your site and the specific page is about. If you ask most people what their site is about, they'll probably give you a one or two word answer. Unfortunately, there are probably a million other web sites out there fighting for the same two words. Consequently, you have to go beyond that.

Web Informers© analysts use specialist tools that indicate exactly what people are typing into the search engines. They will match your industry experience with their search engine knowledge and then enter it to an Internet Word Tracking tool. The tool analyses all searches that have taken place during the past 60 days and compares them to the words that you have provided. The result is a more detailed portfolio of keywords that are not only industry specific but are proven to be used by your potential customers.

The final process is to take the series of keywords and position them next to each other to form 'key phrases'. This is also known as keyword proximity. Sites with the word(s) in the exact order as those used in a search by a potential customer tend to appear before sites that just contain the words. By not including commas in the keyword tag you will allow the search engine to mix and match the words to determine additional phrases.

If your target market is from a diverse or specific geography, then adding a location keyword is for many sites the most important defining keyword e.g. “data centres London”. Some search engines treat capitalised and lower case words as distinctly different words. Statistics show that a significant majority of people search using all lower case letters. However, if you were searching on the word 'London' you are more likely capitalise it. Consequently, having two versions of this word in your keywords would be preferred.

Also, don't forget misspellings! Many businesses have sites that contain keywords that are commonly misspelled. Include these misspellings in areas that are not overly visible to the viewer but are contained within your visible text. This gOES eQUALLY wELL fOR tEXT lIKE tHIS.

Aside from overall page content, web page titles are without question the most important optimisation item of all. They are heavily weighed by the search engine spiders and are what gets listed on the search results page. Perhaps even more importantly, they are what a surfer will first use to determine if your web site is worth visiting. Initial impressions are important make a good one.

Any keywords listed in your site title should also be included in the description section of your web page. Most importantly, those words should be riddled throughout your page content. Common sense prevails here and businesses should avoid repeating the same word over and over. Repeating the same word over and over is a spamming technique known as 'Keyword Stuffing.' Try for less than 3 times. Go over 5 and you are asking to have a penalty assessed against you.

Finally, repeat all of the above for each and every page within your website.

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