Importance of keywords
When optimizing a website it is important to know which search terms you wish your site to rank well for. Keywords are what search strings are matched against and what make search engine users reach your website. Keywords should describe what your website is about so when people visit your website your content should be relevant to what they are looking for.
Choosing keywords
When choosing keywords you have to keep in mind that you should not only select keywords that describe your website but also keywords that people will be looking for. You might rank great for keywords no one is looking for, but you rather rank well for keywords that attract visitors. Nowadays getting a good rank for a one-word search string is a hassle with the internet being overpopulated with websites constantly trying to get a good rank. A more realistic goal would be to rank good for a two- or three-word search string.
On this website we choose SEO tutorial rather then SEO as keyword cause it would almost be impossible to compete with the millions of websites talking about SEO while the competition for SEO tutorial is more slim. For this page it seems obvious we choose keyword and keywords to describe it.
Another approach to consider is to use synonyms for the keywords you have already selected. Users will often use different words for the same thing and you still want to attract those users to your website by including those synonyms now and then on your pages. But be aware to concentrate on your main keywords and not get distracted by over optimizing for the synonyms as search engines have algorithms to include certain synonyms in the keyword match.
Keywords density
Keyword density it the percentage a certain keyword occurs on a page compared to the total of words on that page. It is used to determine the relevance of a page to specified keywords. The higher the density supposedly the more relevant a page is. For spammers this would be an easy way to rank high, therefor search engines require keywords to occur in a natural way. Choosing the right density will guarantee you high ranking.
There is no such thing as the ultimate keyword density, it varies from search engine to search engine and even then it is a guess where search engines do not give up there algorithms to the main public. According to experts the right density is between 2% and 9%, higher density could have a negative effect on your page rank for that particular keyword.
The best practice is to use a keyword density tool and compare the density of a keyword on the top 10 ranking websites for that certain keyword. Now when you are optimizing you website you can use this information to decide which is the right density for your website.
Keywords Location
Not only does the density of the keyword counts but also the location, quality over quantity. There are certain locations where a search engine will look for and give more worth too. As with your content density it is important not to stuff these locations with keywords as it will lower the value of them.
URL
A very important location is your URL, this should contain 1 to 3 main keywords. The URL should tell a lot what the website is about but try to make it easy to remember. Before creating a website you need to decide which domain name you want to use and which keywords you want in it, relevant to the whole website. When creating different pages further on you can chose the URL of the page containing another keyword relevant to the page. Be aware that good keyword domains are often already taken, be sure to check this when looking for the right domain.
A good example: http://www.troy-invest.com/commodity-market-investing.php. They used their name and their keyword, and used a short, simple page name that’s perfectly descriptive for the content.
A bad example: http://www.brdve.net/choosing-the-right-online-courses.php. They got the page name right, but the domain itself is totally non-descriptive.
Our URL contains the main keyword SEO Tutorial and Keywords to describe the page. Every other page has a different keyword to describe it but they all talk about SEO.
Title
Another location for keywords is the page title as it shows in almost every browser. To write strict (X)HTML it is not important to fill in the title tag but it is important for optimizing your website. The title should not only be a keyword about the page but it can be a short phrase what the website is about, it should be attractive to the visitors. You want to avoid keyword stuffing in your title tag, the keywords used in the title tag will have a lower value then if you use only a couple. Also should the page title be different for every page else the search engine will think every page has the same content.
Our title starts with the describing keyword of every page and ends with SEO Tutorial which describes the whole website. we could have chosen for a long title like “Importance of Keywords and Keyword location” but we choose for a short title which contains only our main keywords.
Headers
Besides the fact that headers separate paragraphs into related subtopics search engines pay much attention to them. Therefor you should put keywords in these headings, top keywords in the top headings. There is no limit on how many headers a page can have but as with URLs don’t make them to long. A page should have only one top header tag (<h1>) and mostly contains the keywords used in the domain name.
as H1 tag and most important tag of the website we have SEO Tutorial which is the same for every page as it is our main keyword. For h2 tags we have the describing keyword of our page: keywords. We also have “seo tutorial menu” in a h2 tag, this might seem odd as menu is not a keyword we want to rank well for but this is a way to make SEO tutorial seem more important once more.Further we divide each paragraph with h3 and h4 tags, here we repeat important keywords again.
Images
SEO should be applied to all the content on a page and images should not be excluded. Actually images are pretty good for SEO when applied well, search engines do not only look at the text but at everything in the page its code. Not only should the image name be meaningful, it is best to include the main keywords you have used in your domain or header 1 tag. The image alt tag should also contain these very words together with the image name but be sure not to make it too long, search engines frown on over stuffing keywords. Images also attract visitors when they look for them on google images, bing images and so on and you have put the right keywords in the alt tag.
Although we did not find any images describing this page we have used some on other pages. On every image we use “SEO Tutorial -” and then the keyword that describes the image in the filename. In the alt tag we use the same keywords as we used in the filename.
Filename
Files used in the website should have a proper name and preferably contain the main keywords used on the website and the right name for the file. When linking to the file the latter should be the text your linking to, this way you enrich your content.
Bold/Italic
Keywords in your content should be highlighted by putting them in bold or italic. This is how search engines know which words are more important then others. Bold keywords are more important then italic ones, also for visitors it is more obvious which words are important.
As you have noticed we have made some words bold on this page and all of them were keywords. We emphasize these keywords to tell Google once more for which keywords we want to be found.
Top/Bottom
When placing keywords in the first and last lines of your content search engines will think the whole text is about these keywords. These keywords have more effect on search engines then others. Keep in mind that this doesn’t has that much effect but all pieces help.