Choose your best keywords! Easy to say, but difficult to do.

First things first. Carefully pick your keyword phrases from the content you wish to present. Target two and three word phrases. A single page can only be expected to rank highly for two phrases at most.

Keyword density simply means how many times the word or phrase appears on a page. It gets complicated when there are multiple keywords, but make sure these keywords are in the top half of the page, “above the fold.” There’s a formula involving keyword frequency and the number of words in a phrase as a percentage of the total number of words on the page.

Maximum word density threshold is different with each search engine. Most “seo software” puts it at around 10 percent for a two-word phrase. Do not exceed or over-optimize your page’s key word density!

This optimizer suggests positioning keywords in all the important page areas: title, meta tags, comments, headings, link text, body text, alt image text, link urls and the page text for balance. Placed at the beginning of these areas, keywords are said to have prominence and score highly for that requirement. When they appear once in each area, they may satisfy frequency and page distribution requirements.

Remember, do not repeat any single word in the meta tag list and description meta tag. Your keywords on the page should be the ones to use in the meta tag area. Avoid spamming, or keyword stuffing, the search engines don’t like “seo spam:” orphan doorways or unnecessary pages, HTTP tricks designed to short-cut page results and cramming more keywords beyond a certain threshold density.

Examples: duplicate urls with similar page content, cross-linked to “boost” rankings or repeated keyword phrases with the same font color as the background. Achieving this by HTML or style sheets, it’s still spam! Major engines have their formulas in place to detect the kind of spam they dislike the most. Search engines often blackball offenders, even applying a penalty of page rank Zero.

After the problem is fixed, it can take many weeks or months to get back into the search results.

Body text requires thematic keyword phrases. A page’s core keywords constitute the “skeleton” of a web site’s copy. Each page you create makes a place or position for these terms. A good writer will fill out the topic with additional supporting elements. When done, it should all hang together.

Remember the “outline” excercises in high school English class? Creating an outline for your site content will help you organize the material by breaking it down into its fundamental parts. This will also help you build good site navigation links.

Think of keyword phrases as setting the theme for the page and the site. Many search engines factor a “theme” approach and score extra points for it. Match a theme topic with your site’s incoming and outgoing links.

How often and where to use keywords is the next topic. Let’s go to part two for more about top search engine results through keyword density and prominence.

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• Monitoring and Updating Your Keywords (cash-bandit.com)
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