What are keywords and why are they so important in optimizing your website?

Keywords, basically, are the words or phrases that are most associated with the subject of your business.  These are the terms that people will most likely use to search for information about the topic of your website. For example, your website is dedicated to the general subject of “cat care.”  The keywords that are applicable for your business should be:

cat care
care cat
care of a cat
cat care clinic
cat care society
care of my cat
take care of my cat
take care of a cat
cat health care
to take care of a cat
how to take care of a cat
care for a cat
care of cat
care for cat
care of your cat
to care for a cat
how to care for a cat
taking care of a cat
cat dental care
persian cat care

There are more, most definitely, but these examples should give you a good idea on how to come up with the most effective keywords for your online business.

You could manually think of 1000s of applicable keywords, but such would be a brain buster.  Instead, check out the tools found on the following websites:

The features on these sites will give you a lot of suggestions for possible keywords which you can use.  Once you have selected your keywords, it’s time to put them to good use.  Here are the things that you should do with them.

Populate your website’s content with the keywords.  Try to insert 2 to 4 keywords per 100 words.  This will give you a 2 to 4 percent density level, which many experts believe is the optimal amount of keywords to attract the attention of the search engine spiders without compromising the logical integrity of your content.

Remember, just because you use the keywords in your content, doesn't mean that the readability of your content should be sacrificed.  Always keep in mind that you have to keep your content informative.

Insert the keywords in your meta tags. Meta tags are HTML codes that help the search engine spiders to identify your web pages.  Simply include the following tag in your source code:

Please Note: In each of the HTML instances below, to create PROPER html tags you will need to replace [ with < AND ] with >.

[META name=”keywords” content=”(place your keywords here with each term separated by a comma)”] Meta tags should also be present for your title, with the use of the tag [title] , as well as your headlines, with the use of the tag [h1], [h2], [h3] and so on and so forth.

Here’s an example of a title tag for your source code:

[title]An Introduction To Cat Care[title]

And here’s an example of a headline tags:

[h1]Why Should You Care For Your Cat?[h1]

[body](the appropriate part of your content goes here)[body]

[h2]How To Start Caring or Your Cat[h2]

[body](the appropriate part of your content goes here)[body]

Use your keywords in your ALT tags.  ALT tags is the alternative text that appears every time the mouse cursor passes over an image.  It is advisable that you have a working knowledge of HTML for this, though most HTML editors like Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver have features that will make this easier.

It is important to note how search engine spiders read your website.  Once they have pinpointed your page, courtesy of the meta tags in your source code, the search engine spiders will read your content from the uppermost left part of the page going to the extreme right, and back left in the next line, much like how a web surfer will view your site.

It is therefore essential that the uppermost left portion of your webpage contains your keywords.  This can be done by including the said keywords in your title. Your first paragraph is critical.  Make sure to include your keywords in the very first sentence, and also try to mention your keywords at least twice in the rest of the paragraph.  Succeeding paragraphs need only mention your keywords at least once.

Divide your content into paragraphs, and introduce a shift in subtopic with a sub-headline.  The sub-headline should also include your keywords.

Lastly, about the bottommost right portion of a web page, many people are actually having a hard time figuring out how to include the keywords in this section.  Here’s a simple trick.  The bottommost right portion of a page is usually reserved for your copyright notice.  In our running example of a business involved with cat care, where “cat care” are the primary keywords, you could use the copyright format below:

© 2005 cat care

That should do it, right?

Keyword research and website optimization are only a small part of getting high search engine rankings. I will cover other strategies in coming articles.