Role Of Keywords in Search Engine Optimization

Hello all,

Hope you are learning to do Search Engine Optimization through my easy to understand posts. In case of any queries, you can always leave a comment on my post.

Moving ahead, now I’ll continue our discussion from my previous post, “how to – search engine optimization” from the section where we were discussing keywords. We were discussing that after competitive analysis, go for the keyword research. First of all strategize and look for the keywords your competitors are targeting on. Check the competition on those keywords. And accordingly choose for your own site.
Make a detailed list of all the keywords with the average number of searches, competition and even the budget if you wish to start with PPC in future. Always take those keywords that would give you business and not just those with heavy search results.
After the keyword research comes the placing of keywords. Place them well in the url, h1 tags, meta title tag, meta description tag, and meta keyword tag. Also, maintain a particular keyword density, keyword prominence and keyword proximity in your content.

• Keyword Density: Also called the stuffing of keywords in your content, should approximately be 1-2%, that is, in every 100 words you write, make use of your keyword or keyword tails for not more than 1-2 or maximum 3 times.
• Keyword Prominence: The keywords we place in our content should be placed more in the beginning. In other words, keywords should be close to the title tags, body tags, strong and other such tags. The closer the keywords to such tags, better is the ranking.
• Keyword Proximity: This basically represents the distance between the search term keywords, how close the keywords are placed within the search term. So, always try to think from the user’s point of view how should the keywords be placed and work accordingly.

For the meta title, prefer not to put more than 2 keywords with the same root but different variations. This is due to the reason that title needs to be not more than 60-65 characters inclusive of white spaces. Next, if we talk of meta description, try to use the same keywords that of title but in a bit descriptive way. But keep in mind, this description is what most users go through before entering your site, hence it has to be catchy and at the same point relevant. For meta keywords tag, you may insert various variations of 1-2 root keywords.

Next we would come on anchor text. Anchor text is that which has link of another page of your website. At times, we give short descriptions of our inner pages on our main page, and after the description, we place a link on “Read More” or “Click Here”, which is not considered to be a good practice. You must always place your links on the keywords. Say for example, you may write ‘to read more click “Digital Marketing Services” ‘. In this way you may place your keyword as your anchor text.
All in all, we come to know that keywords play a vital role in the ranking of your site and hence you must make use of them very wisely. This doesn’t mean you fill your site with nothing other than keywords, as doing this is a part of Black Hat SEO and might spam your site.

Yes, go ahead and play with the keywords, but don’t break the rules, as the principle “Mr. Search Engine” is very strict and will give you the punishment irrespective of who you are.

Stay Tuned for part 3

Laura Stevens
Marketing Analyst
Go-Designy