There is a significant misconception that keywords are no longer as important as they previously had been with respect to search engine results and website ranking. It is true that Google (and Google alone) does not index the keyword meta tag. In fact, they never have. However, the importance of keywords with respect to content and source coding has never been higher.
Keywords are the roadmaps all search engines employ to effectively connect someone searching for your product or service to your company’s website. Whatever information is typed into the specific search engine query is used to locate all websites with any mention of any one of those words. That is why so many hundreds of thousands or millions of results appear for each query. That is also why the number of results diminishes in direct proportion to the addition of words and modifiers to the search query. Naturally, there are fewer results for companies offering “red high heeled dress shoes” (a key phrase) than companies that sell “shoes” (the root keyword). There are even fewer for “best price for red high heeled dress shoes”, the buying term.
What does this mean to you? If you know the ins and outs of keywords, key phrases and buying terms, you are well on your way to a first page ranking.
Use these steps to utilizing keywords for improved rankings:
1. Keyword research
2. Content creation
3. Source code adjustments
Keyword research is critical
More than ever in the past, the value of solid keyword research cannot be overestimated. You need to know not only the number of people searching for your particular phrase, you need to also know the number of other companies, nonprofits, etc. that are optimizing their websites for that phase. Both aspects should carry equal weight when deciding which keywords to use on your web pages. A fabulous free aid that Google provides is their Adwords Keyword Tool. It indicates search volume both nationally and locally as well as the relative competition for each variation of that term.
Content is king – more than ever before
The latest algorithm modification from Google has forever changed the search engine landscape. Known as the “Panda” update, websites offering interesting and valuable content will be rewarded and those that have “scraped” content from another site or used poor grammar with boring copy writing will be set back in the search rankings. How? That is another topic for another article, but suffice it to say, they can. Keywords must be used in your content with just the right frequency and specificity.
Source coding
Finally, the keyword phrase you select must be part of your meta tags, headers and page titles for each page of your website. If you are unfamiliar with this territory as most of us are, by all means contact a competent search marketing company such as Strategic eMarketing to assist.