Search Engine Friendly Keywords

Keywords are obviously an important thing to understand correctly for SEO work on any website, but many people see it as more straightforward than it really is. Most people think they can just list a few of their most important words and the visits will roll in, but it's much more complicated than that.

There was a time when "keyword stuffing" was popular, but now those days are gone. It's all about percentages now. For every keyword you add to your list you are effectively diluting the importance of each word used in a search. The percentage is broken down and divided among those words used.

For example, if you have a website about successful marketing research online, you may use keyword terms like "marketing, research, success, advertise, online", and each word would rate a percentage of 20% out of 100. If you used only 4 keywords then each one would be worth 25%. It works the same with descriptions used as well. The more you use certain keywords in a description, the higher it's percentage of importance will be. There used to be variables such as emphasizing certain words with the use of capitals, but things change so rapidly in the SEO world that it's not as important as it once was.

How the percentage rate effects you when ranking in "organic" (ie. not paid) search engine listings is that, if someone else's site uses the same keywords at a higher percentage, then they will be found ahead of you, regardless of PR or site size. If my own marketing research site used just the keywords "marketing" and "research" then each word would be valued at 50% and, therefore, be more valuable than your keywords at 20%. I've had new sites show up as number one in the listings within a couple days of launch just by keyword percentage strength alone.

What you should do about this is really quite simple. Just use the keywords that are absolutely essential. In my first example, the word "online" isn't necessary, as it's a website, so that should be obvious. Your "success" is also subjective, so should be left out. Just emphasize what really needs to be without overdoing it.

The other point that needs to be addressed is spelling errors. That is another SEO relic of the past. "Experts" would use every spelling mistake variation they could think of in their keywords in the hopes of full optimization. That is also no longer necessary and can dilute your "good" keywords significantly. The majority of your potential search engine visitors will type the words correctly and, hopefully, find you. Those who make spelling mistakes in Google will now see a "Did You Mean" warning at the top showing them the correct spelling for that word. Try typing in a mispelled word and see for yourself! I've had search engine visitors find my sites using all sorts of horrible spelling variations, even though I only use the correct ones.

You should really only need to consider word variations when branding an uncommon name, and that's really an entirely different post altogether, so, until next time, have a great and search engine friendly week!