The Whole Truth About Search Engine Optimization
A Pet Sitter's Guide to Google, Yahoo and DMOZ

Part 4: A Proper Place for Keywords

Many website designers made the mistake of over-emphasizing keyword use in the "Meta Keywords" HTML tag. Long lists which once got the attention of search engines now count against you. There are many places in your site where keywords can and should be utilized. The "Title" tag is the most important. The contents appear in the title bar of your internet browser and fundamentally describe the topic of each page. Next in importance are those "Meta keywords" and "Meta Description" tags.

The Meta keywords tag was created as a tool to index your website correctly in search engines. The optimum word is "correctly." It was not meant to be used to artificially boost your page rank, nor can it be abused to achieve this any longer. The Meta Description Tag is used by many (but not all) search engines to display a short description of your website in the search results. It is crucial that the title and meta tags all contain the same fundamental keywords.

Next in important is the content of your site. You should use your selected keywords frequently in the text and image descriptions of your pages. Header tags, Paragraph tags, "Alt" attributes (image descriptions) in Image tags, and especially the text that appears in links (more on this later), are all places to make use of your keywords. The important thing to remember is not to use them excessively or unreasonable. Use the keywords in a natural, relevant way. Use them in context.

It has been reported that Google detects excessive overloading of keywords on sites. If you are planning to stuff lots of excessive, invisible keywords in hidden comments and fonts that are the same color as your background, think again. Google and Yahoo are both on to that.

Google now searches for not only the specific keywords entered, but also derivatives of that word. For example, if you search for the word “pet sitter,” Google may also match pages for the words “pet sitters”, “pet sitting”, and “pet sit.” This suggests context is important. Your keywords must relate to the rest of the content on your page and throughout your website.

List of essential tags in your HTML to use keywords:
(there are other places, but these are the most essential)

<TITLE>keywords</TITLE>
<META description="keywords" />
<META keywords="keywords" />
<H1>keywords</H1>
<H2>keywords</H2>
<A href="keywords.htm">keywords</A>
<P>keywords</P>
<IMG src="keywords.jpg" alt="keywords" />

Use, but with caution:

<NOSCRIPT>keywords</NOSCRIPT>
<!-- keywords -->