Search Engine Optimization - Developing Keywords

Selecting Keywords:

Choosing keywords for your META tags is an art. To use keywords to your advantage, use specific and common terms for your site.

Using a tool such as the one found at Overture.com can help you find related keywords and keyword phases.

If keywords are too unusual or are too difficult to spell, searchers may not include them in the search query.

Optimized Keywords:

Consider the terms the searcher would use. Make a thorough list of the internet keywords that best describes the information contained on the site.

Give greater credibility to your keywords by frequently using keywords. As keywords are used more frequently within the site, the Relevancy Factor grows higher. Consequently, the page may be given a higher priority in the search engine rankings.

Spam Warning: Some search engines consider too many repeated META tagged keywords to be spam.

Building a Keyword List:

Use Plurals:

Plurals are easier to search than singular words because search engines capture both the singular and plural forms.

Vary Word Forms:

Use the keywords in various forms, with hyphens and without, one word or two words, etc.

Using Common Misspellings:

If you are aware of how users commonly misspell words, you can use these variant spellings in your keywords.

Keyword Phrases:

Keyword Phrases help people narrow their search and can provide your site with a better rating.

Some search engines will only look at the first 250 characters of a keyword list. To conserve your character count, create keyword combinations or keyword phrases.

META Tags:

In addition to title and keyword searches, many search engines target META tags placed within the HTML code.

META tags are not visible therefore, you can code several types of META tags within the HTML to make the Web site more searchable.

META Tag Description:

Use several of the most important keywords in the description and keep the description short. Some search engines will not accept descriptions that exceed 250 characters.

The basic syntax for this tag is:

<META name="description" content="Write your description here">

Be sure to construct the description carefully. It should get the searcher’s attention as well as describe the page.

Keyword META Tags:

Since site visitors can not see the contents of a META tag, using it to add keywords to a page provides additional information about a page without interfering with the readability of the text.

Specifying keywords:

<META name="keywords" content="Write keywords here, using a comma separate each keyword and keyword phrase">

Alt Image Tag:

Did you know that images on your page can help your listings too?

<IMG SRC="Your_Picture.gif" width="10" height="10" alt="Descriptive image text goes here">

Be sure to include an alt tag for every image on your site.

Robots META Tags:

If you want to prevent a search engine from indexing a single page or pages of your site, place the Robots META tag in the HEAD tag of a page to deflect the robot or spider. The syntax for this tag is:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

Not all search engines support the Robots META tag.

Title Tag:

Do not over look the importance of a good title tag. Title Tags should include the most important keywords and keyword phases.

The length of your page title should not exceed 50-80 characters including spaces.

Almost all search engines will display your pages title in the search results. 

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