Keywords
What are Keywords
/ Key phrases?
Keywords are words, which a user
enters into a particular search engine or directory in order to
find information relating to the subject of his interest. A key
phrase is a combination of keywords and adjectives
Why are Keywords important for search engine
optimization ?
The keywords form the basis for
any web site as they greatly impact in the search engine listing
and ranking. Wondering how? Let us straight away dive into an example,
which clears our doubts. We are well aware that a normal web surfer
keys in a search keyword in a directory or a search engine to find
the sites relating to the subject of his / her interest. Keywords
are useful in determining the Meta tags of a page, the content of
a page, the image names of a website and the links in a website.
Keywords are the single most important aspect in important component
of search engine optimization (not to be confused with meta tags).
In fact companies dealing in search engine optimization services
spend considerable time and effort to determine relevant keywords.
Assume that a user is interested
in purchasing cheap computer peripherals; he would type in "cheap
computer peripherals" in a search engine. All the sites
related to the search key phrase would be listed in the search engine
result. Now if the user types in "low priced computer peripherals",
the same sites, which appeared in the first search result need not
appear again in the search result for the new search key phrase.
From this we can infer that the probability of a site getting listed
in a search result to some extent is dependent on the keywords and
key phrases used. Also different users may use different search
key phrases or keywords while searching. A site named computerperipherals
may get listed for a key phrase "Cheap computer peripherals"
typed by user 'A' and the same may not be listed for the key phrase
"Low priced computer peripherals" typed by user 'B' in
the search result. Why? Because the search engine searches for documents
or pages containing the key phrase only "Cheap" as the
keyword and returns those documents or web pages that contain the
keyword "Cheap". Since the site used "Cheap"
as the keyword and did not use "low priced" even once
in any one of the pages, it gets listed for the former search query.
Finally keywords or key phrases to some extent are useful in determining
the relevance and the search engine ranking of a site.
What should be there in Keywords?
The keywords / key phrases should
primarily describe and determine the content and the relevance of
the page in which they are placed. The keywords / key phrases may
contain the appropriate technical words relative to the subject
and can also include any adjectives relating to the context. To
ensure top search engine rankings a careful research about the keywords
keeping the end user in perspective is extremely important.
How to define a Keyword?
For effective search engine optimization
of your website keywords should be formulated for each and every
page. Define the keywords and key phrases that best describe the
content of the page. Put yourself in the shoes of the web visitor
and frame the keywords that a user will key in to find sites similar
to yours. In this way, you can phrase relevant keywords in a very
reliable and easy manner for each page. Believe me the way to get
top search engine rankings is to concentrate on keywords.
Present day relevance of Keywords
In the good old days, almost all
the search engines used to rely heavily on Meta keywords, key phrases,
keyword density and proximity. Keywords played a very major role
in judging the ranking of the site in the search engine result.
The present scenario has changed and each search engine has developed
its own algorithm in ranking a web site. For example, Google relies
mainly on the page rank and link popularity. Most of the search
engines are now tending towards more advanced algorithms. Even though
the relevance of keywords has decreased, they undoubtedly form the
basis for effective search engine optimization.
|
