Choose Your Keywords Carefully

One important aspect of search engine optimisation is the use of keywords. Well-planned and well-placed keywords can greatly improve your rankings on search engines like Google. So if keywords are a good thing, you should add as many as you can, right?

Over the years, search engines have caught on to abusive keyword use and have taken steps to discourage its use. If the same keyword is repeated frequently, many search engines will actually penalize the site and lower the ranking. The meta keywords tag is an area often stuffed with keywords in an attempt to improve keyword density and improve rankings on those search terms. Blackhat tactics such as this may have worked in the past but today most search engines discard the contents within the meta keywords tag completely. In cases of extreme keyword stuffing, search engines such as Google will issue a penalty for that site, which means that your site will be pulled from the indexes. These penalties can last as little as a few weeks or, in a worse case, be permanent. Either way, the effects of a penalty is devastating and should be avoided at all costs.

Of course, keeping your site free of excess keywords means the keywords you do use must be as effective as possible. Google offers a keyword tool that can assist in keyword selection. With this tool you can enter keywords you are considering. The tool will suggest similar popular keywords. You can also enter the address to your website, and the tool will suggest keywords to add. You could also add the link to a successful competitor’s site to get insight into the keywords that have contributed to their success. Either way this tool will allow you to see the search volume on each term suggested as well as the relative amount of advertiser competition.

There is one final thing to consider when developing your keywords. Beware of stop words. Stop words are common words that are ignored by search engines. This includes words like: and, the, of, with, because. Since search engines ignore these words, they may not seem like a big deal. However, if stop words continually appear in your keywords, it will reduce your keyword density and impact the effectiveness of your keywords.