Keywords are the key pun not intended ingredients to search engine optimization. If want your website to rise from the ranks and be one of the first page search engine results, you need to know which keywords work best for your website and how to incorporate them in your content without ruining its cohesiveness, coherence, and value.



Keywords and How Search Engines Work

The first step to finding the right keywords for your website is to understand how search engines work.

Search engines work basically the same regardless if it is Yahoo, Google, or America Online that is behind it. The labor force of search engines is called search engine spiders software programs capable of surveying and analyzing data from the Internet.

Keywords can be any single or group of words found in your website. The more they are used, the better but frequency does not guarantee its effectiveness. Your chosen keywords must also match the query entered by the searcher in the search engine website.

Relevance is important when choosing a particular keyword to represent your website. If you have set up a website for your photography business, words like photography, pictures, and portraits are all relevant keywords because you can see an instant and direct connection between the keywords and the focus of your website.

Now, let us say you used the sentence see great photos of yourself in your photography website and you choose great as a keyword. Your choice does not qualify as a relevant keyword because great is a general term that can not be immediately linked to photography.

Keywords may either be specified by the website owner or designer with the use of meta tags or determined by search engine spiders. Search engines have specific rules when determining which terms should be considered keywords. Besides frequency, words that appear in the title of the article or page, the first sentence, and subheadings are given more points than those that simply appear throughout the body of the text.

Depending on the search engine indexing system, use or insertion of particles and prepositions between keywords and letter case may matter.

For your website to match a query, it must contain exactly the same keywords and positioning of words specified. Thus, if an individual makes a query for red small shoes, your website would not be considered an excellent match if your keyword is small red shoes. Synonyms are not counted either: queries for automobiles will not match websites using vehicles for keywords.

Spelling matters and especially if your website tackles topics that are commonly spelled. If you were the producer behind the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" you should also consider using the keyword The Day After Tomorrow because lots of people make mistakes when spelling this.

Typo errors could also redirect people to other impostor websites instead of landing in yours so you should consider including keyword errors that are a result of speed typing.

To know if your keywords are good choices or not, there are online software tools available to help you evaluate your keywords like America Online Hot Searches, which lets you know the hottest queries since the last hour or day; Google Trends, which allows you to compare results from different words and categorize information according to demographics and other factors; and Yahoo Buzz, which simply let us know what is in and what is out.