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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
other keyword suggestion tools
the actual site
keywords for search engines
- 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
meta 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
the html document
- Keep the HTML concise - and always use stylesheets
- Have the most important keyword rich information at
the top of the HTML document
- Make sure there isn't lots of extraneous JavaScript in
the document header
- Put it in an external file and link to it
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