choosing keywords

Choose 6-10 keyword phrases people would search for to find a site like yours

Phrases produce more specific results than single words
Try to create longer phrases (4+ words) that combine smaller phrases
Ask friends and colleagues which phrases they would use to find a site like yours
Don't include commonplace words in your meta tags (a, at, the etc)
Look at the meta tag keywords your competition use
Don't use irrelevant words, such as "sex" or "Nike", to boost results
- This won't work
- Could get your site barred from search engines
- Could get you sued

Look up these phrases on http://www.wordtracker.com (click on "Free Trial" for a quick look up or purchase the full product)
- Check alternate spellings of the same words and alternate words (some might be more popular than others)
- http://www.wordtracker.com shows all related words too
Update list of keyword phrases according to which are most popular on http://www.wordtracker.com

http://inventory.goto.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
- GoTo's keyword suggestion tool tells you:
  - Related searches that include your term
  - How many times that term was searched on last month
http://www.excite.com/search/voyeur/
- The Search Voyeur randomly displays Excite user searches in a real time basis
http://50.lycos.com/
- Tells you the 50 most popular Lycos user searches for the week
http://www.keyworddensity.com/.
- Keyword density analyzer - Fast free analysis of any web page.

the actual site

Use keyword phrases wisely
- Ideally, make a particular phrase prominent for each page
Include keyword phrases in
- HTML <title> tag
- Heading <h1> - <h6> tags
- Text links
- Body content
- Alt tag in images
Keep the keyword phrase intact - don't split it up into individual keywords
- Make sure it is used in the same way in the title, headings, links, content, alt tags

Make sure the <title> tag is immediately after the <head> tag
Write a keyword rich description for each page
- Don't use the same description across the site
  - If several pages from your site are listed - not obvious to the user which page to choose
  - Reduces the relevancy of individual pages, decreases the chance of relevant pages appearing higher in search engine listings
Place all relevant keywords in the meta keywords content, include different spellings etc
Most search engines who index the meta tags will index 1000 characters for the keywords meta tag - not necessary to squash words together
- I have found that separating words with spaces, not commas, more effective
- Increases the chance of word combinations and reduces unnecessary repetition
More information about meta tags

Keep the HTML concise - and always use stylesheets
Have the most important keyword rich information at the top of the HTML document
- Where possible, alter your HTML formatting
- E.g. Use the "table trick" (see - http://www.delorie.com/web/ses-hint.html)
Make sure there isn't lots of extraneous JavaScript in the document header
- Put it in an external file and link to it