A keyword is a term that is used to match with the search item that a person enters into a search engine to find a specific required information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of two to five words. Such phrases may be called keyword phrases, search phrases, query phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and self-descriptive.

The following are some concepts related to keywords that will help you in optimizing the keywords on a web page.

1.   Keyword Frequency

This is measured as how often does a keyword appear in a website title or description. You do not have

to go overboard with frequency, however, since on some engines if you repeat a word too many times,

you are be penalized for keyword stuffing, which is also called "spamming".

Normally, you should only repeat your keyword in the document as many times as you can get away

with, and up to 3-7 times in your list of metatags.

2.   Keyword Weight

The keyword weight is calculated as the number of keywords occurring on your web page compared to

the total number of words contained on that same page. Some search engines consider this while

determining the rank of your website for a particular keyword search.

One technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, it could be, say, a paragraph

long that highlights a particular keyword. By keeping the overall number of words to a minimum, you

can increase the "weight" of the keyword you are highlighting.

3.   Keyword Proximity

The Keyword Proximity means the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or,

in relation to other words with almost similar meaning as the searched keyword, in some cases.

For search engines, that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected phrase ‘vehicle

loans will outrank a citation’ that mentions vehicle mortgage loans assuming that you are searching

only for the phrase "vehicle loans".

4.   Keyword Prominence

Keyword Prominence is a measure of how high up or early on a page, the keywords are found. Having

keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page are best.

5.   Keyword Placement

On a page, where your keywords are placed is very important factor. For example, for most search

engines, writing the keywords in the title of the page, or in the Heading tags will give it more

relevancy. On some engines, placing keywords in the link text, the part that is underlined on the

screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.

You may also like: What is Keyword Cannibalization? 

Best Places to Put Keywords

Here is a list where you should try to place your main keywords.

•    Keywords in the <title> tag(s).

•    Keywords in the <meta name="description">.

•    Keywords in the <meta name="keyword">.

•    Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.

•    Keywords in the <a href="http://mycompany.com"> keywords </a> - link tags.

•    Keywords in the body copy.

•    Keywords in alt tags.

•    Keywords in <!--place comments here> comment tags.

•    Keywords in the URL or website address itself.

Finding Keywords

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:

•   The potential words, people would use to find your product or service.

•   The problems that your prospective customers may try to solve with your product or service.

•   Keyword tags on rival's websites.

•   Visible page copy on rival's websites.

•   Related search suggestions on top search engines.

•   Using any online tool such as Google Keyword Tool or any other tool available.

•   By analyzing your website carefully and finding out appropriate keywords. This task can be done by expert SEO copywriters.

•   Pay attention to stemming for your keywords - particularly to what the root word is and what Google considers to match the keyword for that word, when optimizing pages over time.

•   Brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your site.

What is Word Stemming?

Google also uses a feature called word stemming that allows all forms of the word - singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned for a searched query by the user.

So if someone types in "interior design", not only the pages that are optimized for that phrase but the pages that contain all variations of that phrase are returned. For example, "interior design", "interior designing", "interior designer".

Hope you got some basic understanding on optimizing keywords and know how to identify them and where to use them.

Also Read: How to Write SEO-Friendly Post

                Secrets of a professional Article Writer

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