A bit confused about keywords

by JMac
6 replies
I am having a bit of difficulty in the concept of using multiple keywords. Here are the things throwing me off.

1. I have seen it here on the forums that I should have no more than 20 keywords in the metatags on my website. If this is the case, do I pick one keyword and target it until I move up in the search engines and once I'm happy with my placement on that keywork then I move on to another for that page?

2. If I write an article, do I just need to include the keyword in it or is there special coding I would have to use that tells the search engines what the keyword is in the article? I am struggling with using a long tail keyword and how to include it in the article so ti shows up as the keyword.

Any advice is greatly appreciated
#bit #confused #keywords
  • Profile picture of the author Mary Green
    I dont know about number 1, i would target a few keywords first, then add more as I get more traffic, but that is my educated guess, and it might not be that great, sorry!

    As for number two, just include the keyword a few times, and it will show in the search engines once it is indexed.
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    • Profile picture of the author KenJ
      Hi J-Mac

      For Articles you should really be focusing on 1 or 2 keywords. Just make sure they are in the title, the article itself a few times and as a tag.

      For web pages I use 3-5 keywords per page but always have one that is the main keyword. Again the keyword should be in the title, description and content.

      If you have chosen good keywords then google will find them.

      To your success

      Kenj
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  • Profile picture of the author keyword-research.info
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    • Profile picture of the author nu1424
      I think others have offered good suggestions. I would offer one more. The whole topic of keyword density is highly debated (the number of times your keyword appears in the article relative to the overall length of the article).

      You can't paint every market with the same brush. The only way to know what will work for a specific market is to test. In one market, maybe the keyword mentioned a couple times is enough to rank. In another market, you might have to have it 4 or 5 times or more.

      Again, test, track and tweak until you find what works for your market/niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author Achilles1963
    I also have a question, this is what my keyword list looks like for 1 site - "buy lottery tickets online","buy lottery tickets",lottery tickets online, buy lottery tickets...etc. some in quotes, some not...I don't know anybody in offline world who knows anything about stuff, HELP!!
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  • Keyword tools are used to help figure out what phrases people actually use to search for whatever they want to find.

    Don't worry too much about the specifics.

    As far as meta keyword tags go. Pick 3 or 4 and call it good. The meta keyword tag is pretty insignificant to SEO... to the point where most people who do SEO believe it has little or no value.

    As far as incorporating them into your article, don't worry about being specific with a certain phrase unless it makes sense and is readable.

    Google is pretty smart... other Search Engines kinda smart.

    Write your article in a single pass. Then use your text editor search feature and see how many times your keyword appears naturally. You can then go back and insert the phrase you want. Bottom line is it has to be readable.

    Keyword density is the number of times per given number of words your keyword appears in the article. Is 1% better than 5%? Depends on who you ask.

    Keyword proximity is where the keyword appears in relation to a given number of words.

    For example:

    Nike brand tennis shoes are long lasting and perform well over time.
    Tennis shoes made by Nike are well known for their performance.

    In sentence 1 "Nike" has a higher proximity than sentence two because it appears first.

    You definitely want keywords related to your article to appear in the first 250 words, just don't over load it.

    There is really a lot to onsite ranking factors, but the bottom line is you want Yahoo, MSN, ASK, And Google, to crawl your article and know what it's about. If you use Adsense you find out in a hurry because it displays related ads or it doesn't.

    Site design, Heading Tags, etc. All these things are factors in onsite ranking. But the real POWER comes from using properly targeted keywords in anchor text that points back to the page on your site.

    There is a lot of ART to this science.
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    • Profile picture of the author JMac
      Thanks for all the great advice!
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      Need help with a virus or other malware? Check out my Free Virus Scan and Removal page.

      If you have a few minutes, I would appreciate an opinion on my first real squidoo attempt at my Best Keyboard page.

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