Search Engines Key Words & Phrases
Keywords and Keyphrases
Keywords and Key Phrases are the words that internet users type into their browsers to seek information. This extract discusses the importance of applying keywords and key phrases to your copy and coding to improve the ranking of your website.
What are Key Words & Key Phrases?
Search Engine Spiders give priority to sites that utilise Key Words and Key Phrases at a preferred ratio in the title tags, META TAGS, copy text, graphic descriptions and page links.
I am sure you have experienced using a Search Engine Browser to find information upon the internet. Often we have to add more words to refine a search, to find exactly what we are seeking.
It is important to identify the key words and phrases that your customers are most likely to use to search for your site, so that can be incorporated into the copy and code of your website.
We will use Jack our Salespower.com.xx site example, discussed earliar in Relationship Marketing to demonstrate these points.
- Jack felt that his target audience would use the following key phrases: sales training, sales courses, sales programs, sales training, sales jobs, selling courses, learning sales, how to sell, salesmen, saleswomen, sales people, how to be in sales, learn selling
- Jack also believed that his target audience would most likely use the following key words: sales, selling, training, trainers, courses, programs, corporate, free, jobs, learning
- Jack's key words also included the Countries and Cities that he thought his customers would include in his search, so he included the following keywords and key phrases:Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, sales programs Australia, Australian sales programs, sales training Australia, Sydney sales trainers, Sydney sales training, Melbourne Sales Trainers, Melbourne sales training and so on...
There were literally hundreds of combinations.
Jack also examined his competitors websites to see what key words they were using, and then used a number of internet tools to help him establish more likely keywords and phrases, and you can find these listed on the website tools page later in the Program.
Important Design Factors For Key Words
- Aim to have a minimum of 250 and a maximum of 750 words on any page.
- Aim to have at least 5 pages of text with no less that 1,250 words in total.
- Incorporate no more than 3 featured keywords and/or key phrases per page.
- Plan to incorporate your key words/phrases no less than 2% and no greater than 4% of your copy (e.g. for every 200 words, include your key words or key phrases no less than four (4) times and no more than eight (8) times.
- Ensure that your keywords and phrases are inserted into graphics description (i.e. the "alt" tags in the pictures code) at least once, no more than three (3 times). Make these in sentence form and avoid using commas.
- Ensure all words shown in your combined "alt" tags text, do not exceed 80 words per page.
- Ensure that the combination of your Bold, Strong and <h1><h2><h3> headlines text does not exceed 90 words per page.
- Ensure that your targetted keywords and phrases are within the first words of your body text. (i.e. after <body>) Preferably in linked Headline Text. <h1>
- Only have one linked <h1> per page, use as many <h2> to <h5> as you like.
- Ensure that you use your keywords in at least one, preferrably two hyperlinked headline bolded captions i.e. <b>, <strong> or , <h2> to <h5> tags even better.
- Include a text link title no more than one time per keyword/phrase link per page. e.g. if you have 4 text links for the same keyword/phrase only include a title in one of them!
- Ideally keyword and key phrase hyperlinks should link to pages that feature the same keywords and key phrases.
- Ensure that you have at least one hyperlink containing the featured keywords of your current page. Link back to the current page.
- Include a Sitemap Page named sitemap.html that links to every page of your website. (If there are more than 50 links, divide these is into a few pages or consider xml feeds.)
Some engines will only read the top and bottom paragraphs of your website, so it is a smart practice to include keyword hyperlinks at the bottom as well as top of web pages.
It is also beneficial to put the keywords into the "h1" tags as some of the search engines give these headings priority.
Whoops and Yuk! Arn't they those great big ugly captions?
The use of H1 links dates back to original html coding, which was based upon the layout principles of old printing presses. H1 actually stood for Headline 1, H2 for Headline 2, etc.
I don't know why search engines still see these as important, as very few modern web products are aware of them, which is why we have to put them in by hand, but they still work ... so while they do we use them.
In recent years, probably to accommodate new web design products and languages, the incorporation of <b> Bold tags and <strong> Strong tags have also gathered some strength with search engines, BUT! using too many is considered spamming.
Caution: Remember the Golden Rule of Headlines = A maximum of 70 words using bold, strong or <h1><h2><3> links on one page and strictly only one <h1> tag on each page.
The organic H1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are always left margin justified and look like this:
HEADLINES 1
HEADLINES 2
HEADLINES 3
HEADLINES 4
HEADLINES 5
HEADLINES 6
We make them look the size, font and alignment we desire by using the css code in the header of our page (or by pointing to an external .css file with the code in it) - as below
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
<!--
h1 {text-align:center;margin-left:0px;margin-top: 1px; margin-bottom: 1px; text-indent:0px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-size:12px;text-decoration:none;color:navy;height:12px;}
h2 {text-align:center;margin-left:0px;margin-top: 1px; margin-bottom: 1px; text-indent:0px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:10px;text-decoration:none;color:red;height:10px;}
h3 {text-align:center;margin-left:0PX;margin-top: 1px; margin-bottom: 1px;text-indent:0px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:10px;text-decoration:none;color:orange;height:10px;}
-->
</STYLE>
In content management systems this code is managed in your .css files.