Step by step SEO: Chapter 3

You will end up with hundreds of words that you should sort by your perceived descending order of importance (how likely it is that they will be used by visitors as search words). If uncertain, leave them in the order used by the highest rated pages. Be sure to identify two-word or three-word phrases if used, or if applicable. It is also important that you add words to help clarify the use of your keywords. For instance "capital" might have very different meanings -- such as intellectual capital, state capital, capital letters, venture capital, etc. So a keyword or two that helps the index builders learn the context of your keywords will help raise your search engine rankings. Hint: each keyword in your META tags must also appear within your content to avoid spamming penalties. Also, consider common misspellings as additions to your keyword lists.

Once you have your personal list, validate each phrase for popularity as a search term. There are several tools that are free that allow you to get a glimpse of the usage of various words and phrases. The most popular free keyword suggestion tool is offered by Overture and it is very popular. The best tool for determining what stemmed word is commonly used is Word tracker. It is so good that we recommend it to our clients in our SEO training courses. The results will indicate what terms generate the most searches, thus those are the most important terms (if they are appropriate to your page). Search Engine Optimization and Ranking Advice: Excessive use of META keywords is going to cause a search engine to ignore or decrease the weight for that keyword. And if you use a single word as a keyword, and later repeat it in your keyword string, then you may also be penalized. The string "Web, Web Design, Web" would be considered spamming. Also, keywords like 'word, words, wording, worded' may cause indexing to fail. Things are definitely getting tough, and it is advised that you use extreme caution when creating your Meta Tags. If you are indexed by any engine, and remain indexed for a week, then you have probably passed their test


"For best results, the following Web publishing techniques should be avoided:


Overuse or repetition of keywords

Use of keywords that do not relate to the content of the site

Use of fast meta refresh

Use of colored text on same-color background


Duplication of pages with different URLs

Use of different pages that bridge to the same URL"




It is also important to discard potential keywords that are not likely to be used in a search if they do not contribute to your revenue. Properly done, you might end up with as few as ten or as many as a hundred major keywords. If you add all of the words it will dilute the importance of each keyword, so select well. In general, you will have a hard time keeping the keyword analysis list short if you include plurals and various combinations of words to maximize your frequency counts. This site has many keywords in various forms and combinations but we felt each word was important when we designed our keywords. The last keyword should be your site identification taken from your URL (ours is bruceclay.com), for ranking and placement reasons discussed later. Be sure that this string appears as content to avoid spamming (can be in a URL string or mailto at the bottom of your page). As for spamming technologies, there is evidence that the major search engines look across pages within their index for long-string repeats, so mix up your keywords in the ALT tags to be sure they are not identical in sequence to words used elsewhere (text or META tags). Duplicate content is a very bad thing, and it can cause site-wide penalties. Hint: Be very careful not to replicate content on other URL's, and if it happens (as with affiliate sites) you have a serious problem. Duplicate content is a real problem when doing SEO. Also, repeating your keywords in the content, as long as it is within a reasonable sentence construct and has appropriate context, will not be considered spamming. A search engine usually cares about spamming outside of the standard sentence construct when reviewing content instead of sentence spamming issues. Using exotic "hidden" text techniques will usually have you eliminated, so avoid them when possible.