The role Keywords play in SEO

Keywords are the Most Important Item in SEO

Keywords are the most important SEO item for every search engine - actually they are what search strings are matched against. So you see that it is very important that you optimize your site for the right keywords. This seems easy at first but when you get into more detail, it might be a bit confusing to correctly determine the keywords. But with a little research and thinking the problem of selecting the right keywords to optimize for can be solved.

Choose the Right Keywords to Search Engine Optimize

It seems that the time when you could easily top the results for a one-word search string is centuries ago. Now, when the Web is so densely populated with sites, it is next to impossible to achieve constant top ratings for a one-word search string. Achieving constant top ratings for two-word or three-word search strings is a more realistic goal. If you examine closely the dynamics of search results for popular one-word keywords, you might notice that it is so easy one week to be in the first ten results and the next one- to have fallen out of the first 30 results because the competition for popular one-word keywords is so fierce and other sites have replaced you.

Of course, you can include one-word strings in your keywords list but if they are not backed up by more expressions, do not dream of high ratings. For instance, if you have a site about cats, "cat" is a mandatory keyword but if you do not optimize for more words, like "cat owners", "cat breeds", "cat food", or even "canine", success is unlikely, especially for such a popular keyword. The examples given here are by no means the ultimate truth about how to optimize a cat site but they are good enough to show that you need to think broad when choosing the keywords.

Generally, when you start optimization, the first thing you need to consider is the keywords that describe the content of your site best and that are most likely to be used by users to find you. Ideally, you know your users well and can guess correctly what search strings they are likely to use to search for you. One issue to consider is synonyms. Very often users will use a different word for the same thing. For instance, in the example with the cat site, "canine" is a synonym and it is for sure that there will be users who will use it, so it does not hurt to include it now and then on your pages. But do not rush to optimize for every synonym you can think of - search engines themselves have algorithms that include synonyms in the keyword match, especially for languages like English.

When choosing the keywords to optimize for, you need to consider not only their relevancy to your site and the expected monthly number of searches for these particular keywords. Very often narrow searches are more valuable because the users that come to your site are those that are really interested in your product. If we go on with the cat example, you might discover that the "adopt a cat" keyphrase brings you more visitors because you have a special section on your site where you give advice on what to look for when adopting a cat. This page is not of interest of current cat owners but to potential cat owners only, who might be not so many in number but are your target audience and the overall effect of attracting this niche can be better than attracting everybody who is interested in cats in general. So, when you look at the numbers of search hits per month, consider the unique hits that fit into the theme of your site.