What are keywords?

Keywords are individual words or phrases that describe the main idea of your website.

For example, if you were building a website to sell mp3 players, one of your main keyword phrases would be mp3 players.

Choosing the right keyword phrases can determine the success or failure of your website.

Using the example of mp3 players, if someone did a search for "mp3 players" on Google or Yahoo and used "mp3 players" as their search criteria, there might be 400 million websites using the term.

None of the SEs list more than 1,000 sites and if you don't rank in the first 1,000 sites you have no SE representation.

The chances of your website appearing in the top 10 of listed sites would be slim. Few web surfers will access search results beyond the first page of listed sites.

The use of secondary keywords and keyword phrases can help to improve your position in search listings.

For instance, if you sold only NEW TECH brand mp3 players then the phrase NEW TECH could be used as a secondary keyword phrase. If you sold your mp3 players at discounted prices then discounts could be a secondary keyword phrase.

Developing a Theme

When search engines position your web site in search results, they don't look at just one page in your web site. If you have 10 pages or 500 web pages, to get good positioning you must have a recurring theme throughout the entire site.

That recurring theme should be your major keyword phrase, supported by the use of secondary phrases.

Using the mp3 players example: Instead of creating a page about RCA mp3 players by building a page where the main keyword is RCA, you would continue the theme by using the phrase Mp3 Players RCA. Position within the phrase itself is also important.

Some experts suggest including the phrase in the page name, web page title tag, description meta tag, an h1 header tag, an h2 header tag followed by a paragraph which includes the phrase. This might seem like overkill, but according to the unnamed experts it works.

See also: Read the Experts