Chapter 6 (Part-C): METHODS FOR EFFECTIVE SEO - Keywords

Part-C; METHODS FOR EFFECTIVE SEO 

(KEYWORDS)

Keyword usage & amp; Targeting

Keywords are fundamental to the search process - they are the building blocks of language and of search. In fact, the entire science of information retrieval (including web-based search engines like Google) is based on keywords. As the engines crawl and index the contents of pages around the web, they keep track of those pages in keyword-based indices. Thus, rather than storing 25 billion web pages all in one database, the engines have millions and millions of smaller databases, each centered on a particular keyword term or phrase. This makes it much faster for the engines to retrieve the data they need in a mere fraction of a second.

Obviously, if you want your page to have a chance of ranking in the search results for "dog," it's wise to make sure the word "dog" is part of the indexable content of your document.

Keyword Domination

Keywords dominate our search intent and interaction with the engines. For example, a common search query pattern might go something like this:

When a search is performed, the engine matches pages to retrieve based on the words entered into the search box. Other data, such as the order of the words ("tanks shooting" vs. "shooting tanks"), spelling, punctuation, and capitalization of those keywords provide additional information that the engines use to help retrieve the right pages and rank them.

To help accomplish this, search engines measure the ways keywords are used on pages to help determine the "relevance" of a particular document to a query. One of the best ways to "optimize" a page's rankings is to ensure that keywords are prominently used in titles, text, and meta data.

Generally, the more specific your keywords, the better your chances of ranking based on less competition. The map graphic to the left shows the relevance of the broad term books to the specific title, Tale of Two Cities. Notice that while there are a lot of results (size of country) for the broad term, there are a lot less results and thus competition for the specific result.

Keyword Abuse

Since the dawn of online search, folks have abused keywords in a misguided effort to manipulate the engines. This involves "stuffing" keywords into text, the url, meta tags and links. Unfortunately, this tactic almost always does more harm to your site.

In the early days, search engines relied on keyword usage as a prime relevancy signal, regardless of how the keywords were actually used. Today, although search engines still can't read and comprehend text as well as a human, the use of machine learning has allowed them to get closer to this ideal.