Succeed With Perfect Keyword Placement
| Category: Search Engines - Keywords | Date: 2003-06-12 |
You have to wonder why some pages rank higher than others sometimes. For the most part, though, it comes down to the frequency and placement of the keywords. Weve done a little experimenting with this (okay, a lot of experimenting) to try to determine what matters the most when a search engine ranks your pages.
The results of our experiments told us a whole lot that we already knew, and a few things that were a little bit surprising. First of all, the conventional wisdom that META tags and page titles matter held true. Its also true that the number of times a keyword or phrase is repeated on the page helps. It also helps to put the keyword in the first paragraph of text on the site, because many search engines dont read any farther for keywords, at least on the first pass.
What we didnt know was that many search engines seem to find the keywords used in your links to be more important than normal keywords. For example, if youre trying to maximize your ranking for the phrase, "freeze-dried gerbil food," you obviously want to put that in the META tags, and repeat it as often as grammar allows in the body of the page. In addition, if you have a link to your order form, you want the link to say "order freeze-dried gerbil food" instead of "order now."
So heres the "big list" of where to place your keywords:
Page title - use one keyword or phrase per page, in the first five words of the title. Titles longer than 5 words dont seem to be indexed at all.
META Tags - put the top keyword or phrase for each page into the "keyword" tag and repeat it in the "description" tag. Only the first 100-150 characters are going to matter in most cases, so put each pages keyword target first in the list.
Content - weave your keywords into the content of your pages. If theres more than one way to say it, stick to one single spelling or tense for each page. Dont try to fool the search engines by repeating keywords for no reason, or hiding a string of keywords in an invisible color, theyre all hip to this trick by now, and you may find that your site doesnt get indexed at all.
Links - use keywords or phrases whenever possible in the text of your links. Again, dont try to "spam" the search engines by repeating the keywords several times. If keywords appear on the pages your site is linked from (reciprocal links), this will also improve your ranking.
Domain Name - there does appear to be a small advantage in having keywords appear in your domain name. Website Promotion Central has a pretty long domain name, but it works better for the search engines than our old name, cannedhelp.com.
If you follow our keyword strategy throughout your site, it will definitely make a difference. Whether it makes enough of a difference to put your site on top is another question. To hit the top of the rankings, youll probably have to resort to diabolical means, like bridge pages and the like. Just remember that search engine positioning is a probably full time job for many of your competitors. If you have that kind of budget, youre probably better off hiring a marketing consultant and an advertising agency instead of visiting this site! The point is, if you dont land at the top of the search engine rankings after following our plan, your next step should be to increase your sites link popularity by launching a serious reciprocal linking campaign.
About the Author
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Fast Start!", a concise guide to positioning your site with the new breed of search engines. Visit cannedbooks.com
dan@cannedhelp.com
http://www.cannedbooks.com
The results of our experiments told us a whole lot that we already knew, and a few things that were a little bit surprising. First of all, the conventional wisdom that META tags and page titles matter held true. Its also true that the number of times a keyword or phrase is repeated on the page helps. It also helps to put the keyword in the first paragraph of text on the site, because many search engines dont read any farther for keywords, at least on the first pass.
What we didnt know was that many search engines seem to find the keywords used in your links to be more important than normal keywords. For example, if youre trying to maximize your ranking for the phrase, "freeze-dried gerbil food," you obviously want to put that in the META tags, and repeat it as often as grammar allows in the body of the page. In addition, if you have a link to your order form, you want the link to say "order freeze-dried gerbil food" instead of "order now."
So heres the "big list" of where to place your keywords:
Page title - use one keyword or phrase per page, in the first five words of the title. Titles longer than 5 words dont seem to be indexed at all.
META Tags - put the top keyword or phrase for each page into the "keyword" tag and repeat it in the "description" tag. Only the first 100-150 characters are going to matter in most cases, so put each pages keyword target first in the list.
Content - weave your keywords into the content of your pages. If theres more than one way to say it, stick to one single spelling or tense for each page. Dont try to fool the search engines by repeating keywords for no reason, or hiding a string of keywords in an invisible color, theyre all hip to this trick by now, and you may find that your site doesnt get indexed at all.
Links - use keywords or phrases whenever possible in the text of your links. Again, dont try to "spam" the search engines by repeating the keywords several times. If keywords appear on the pages your site is linked from (reciprocal links), this will also improve your ranking.
Domain Name - there does appear to be a small advantage in having keywords appear in your domain name. Website Promotion Central has a pretty long domain name, but it works better for the search engines than our old name, cannedhelp.com.
If you follow our keyword strategy throughout your site, it will definitely make a difference. Whether it makes enough of a difference to put your site on top is another question. To hit the top of the rankings, youll probably have to resort to diabolical means, like bridge pages and the like. Just remember that search engine positioning is a probably full time job for many of your competitors. If you have that kind of budget, youre probably better off hiring a marketing consultant and an advertising agency instead of visiting this site! The point is, if you dont land at the top of the search engine rankings after following our plan, your next step should be to increase your sites link popularity by launching a serious reciprocal linking campaign.
About the Author
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Fast Start!", a concise guide to positioning your site with the new breed of search engines. Visit cannedbooks.com
dan@cannedhelp.com
http://www.cannedbooks.com
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