Incorporating Keywords and Search Engine Optimization
Whilst Google PR will be a factor in search engine rankings there are many factors which are just as important if not more important in the overall position of your site in the search results. For most search engines these days other important factors include site content, site title and to a lesser but still important degree site age, description and the number of and keywords used by inbound links and alt tags of your images. All of these factors play a role in your position within search engine rankings. For Google, and many other search engines, the content of your site is particularly relevant, which is why the term ‘quality content is king’ has come about. It is important to note however that Google is always refining their system to improve and optimize their rankings to bring up the most appropriate sites possible. This means that content that is duplicated or isn’t unique or is largely from other sites and sources won’t be seen as ‘quality’ by Google and that in the long run when it comes to search engine rankings always be seen as inferior to original and quality content.
In addition to creating your unique and relevant content it is important that your keywords on that particular page are prominent and occur frequently, this is keyword or phrase density. It is important that major keywords in which you wish to be ranked well for have a keyword density that is significant yet not too high, otherwise the search engines will interpret that to be search engine manipulation which is frowned upon and an offense for which you may be banned, falling under breaches of ‘keyword saturation’ and ‘keyword spamming’. To make sure the topic (keywords) of a page is not seen as spam it is wise to make sure that your pages consist of around 500 – 750 words of original content. This way you will have loads of information on the page and with such a large amount of content shouldn’t have any issues with a keyword density that is considered spam yet limiting the page’s word length to around 750 words should allow you to still remain specific and topic (keyword) focused. Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts would agree that a keyword density of 2 – 5% is a mark you want to be aiming for. It is also prudent to note that people using search engines don’t just type in one word searches, they often use phrases to search for information so your keywords and their position and frequency next to other keywords (which creates phrases) will also be important to monitor and optimize.
The golden rule is, be honest and original; don’t try and fraudulently manipulate the search engines or take short cuts through copying content – they are smart and will catch you. It is interesting to note that the websites listed at the top of any search engine rankings are rarely manipulative; rather, quite on the contrary, are the ones that conduct themselves professionally and have well written content with the primary purpose of being informative and useful.
Quote from Google:
“Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google’s search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google’s technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.”
So with this in mind it is useful to note that being relevant, original and connected to those sites of similar and relevant content with consideration of the primary topic (keywords) or your page. You can analyze your keyword density amongst other things such as potential keyword phrases with these links:
Keyword Suggestion Tool
Keyword Suggestions for Google
Keyword Density Checker
In the above statement from Google, it mentioned that they also font. This refers to Google placing greater significance on a site’s keywords when it is in bold, underlined, linked, anchored and/or in a larger font than the rest of the text on the page (regular content). This suggests that it is often advisable to make a title above your content for each page which has your major keywords in it and describes the content below, and most importantly is bolded and in a larger font as to differentiate it as important. Sometimes even underlining or bolding text within a paragraph of content itself goes a long way to reinforce the keywords of a page and further help the relevancy of that keyword to the page and in turn improve the page’s ranking in search engines for that keyword.