How
Keywords Affect Your Rankings
How Keywords Affect Your Rankings
This article explains a few things about SEO, and if you're interested,
then this is worth reading, because you can never tell what you
don't know.
We all want to know how keywords affect our rankings, but to find
out we’ll need to do a little work. Many say keywords are
the key to good search engine rankings, although they aren’t
at all the only factor.
If you need a tool to help you decide on your keywords, try Overture's
Search Term Suggestion Tool – it allows you to test your keyword
rankings by showing you statistics on recent searches for them.
It’s a great tool when you have no clue which keyword you
should choose, as it can give you a list of terms that were recently
searched on.
Keyword Density.
Keyword density refers to the number of the keywords contained
within your text relative to the amount of text there is. Preferred
keyword density ratios vary between search engines, but you should
generally try to keep them between two and eight percent (major
search engines prefer the lower end). Keyword analysis tools can
help to optimize a web page’s keyword density. These tools
are good if you’re not sure of what you’re doing, as
they’re very intuitive and explain things as you go.
Counting the Keywords.
Many SEO experts will tell you that the keyword density of your
text isn’t a very important factor, and that you should be
careful not to overdo it. So is there a limit? How many times should
you use your keywords? SEO experts won’t be able to answer
these questions for you, because no-one’s really sure of the
answer. The best answer is that it changes regularly, and you can
never be sure – you have to experiment to see what works for
you.
Location of Keywords.
When testing the effects of keyword location, we found that pages
with the keywords at the top and bottom of the page ranked higher
on Google than pages with the keywords in the middle.
I trust that what you've read so far has been informative. The
following section should go a long way toward clearing up any uncertainty
that may remain.
Many other search engines also give keywords more or less weight
based on their location, but keep in mind that each search engine’s
algorithm is different. Here’s a list of how most search engines
prioritize keyword positions, from most to least:
1. Domain name.
2. Page title.
3. Headings (i.e. H1, H2, etc.).
4. Body text (the first 2 to 3 KB usually counts more).
5. Meta tags (especially description).
6. Links (including keywords in the URL or link text of links to
you).
7. Alt text (the ‘alt’ descriptions for your pictures).
Really, though, keyword density is one of those areas where you’ll
have trouble on your hands if you try to second guess the search
engines. Be cautious.
As your knowledge about SEO continues to grow, you will begin to
see how SEO fits into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how
something relates to the rest of the world is important too.
About the Author James Mahony is the
founder of http://www.searchmama.com
- A site dedicated to Search Engine Optimization http://www.searchmama.com
http://www.thedomaintycoons.com http://www.articlesforwebsitecontent.com
|
