Manipulating keywords to boost search rankings
Published: 05 Feb 2004 11:30 GMT
Keywords are the key to better search engine rankings. That statement, or something like it, has long been a mantra for Web builders. The statement is still true, but dramatic changes in how the leading search engines rank Web pages has forced a significant change in how the statement is interpreted and applied to optimising Web pages for search engines.
Understanding keywords
Keywords are the word or words that a Web visitor types into the input box of a search engine to begin a quest for Web pages on a particular topic. Advanced users can build sophisticated search criteria with multiple keywords joined by Boolean operators, but most users just enter a single word or, perhaps, a two- to three-word phrase.
The search engine then scans its index looking for Web pages that match the visitor's search criteria and returns a list of matching pages, usually ordered by relevance.
The challenge for a Web builder seeking to drive traffic to a site is to anticipate what keywords potential visitors will use to search for sites on a given topic and then engineer the Web pages to get the highest possible relevance ranking in the search engine for those keywords. Divining the appropriate keywords for a given Web site requires an elusive combination of subject knowledge, marketing savvy, luck, and a well-polished crystal ball. After the keywords are identified, weaving them into the fabric of your Web page successfully is often more art than science, but it helps to start with some knowledge of where to put those keywords to achieve the best effect.
Keywords that don't count
In years past, Web builders came up with a list of keywords for a Web page and placed that list in the keyword meta tag. The keyword meta tag was designed to be a reference for indexing page content, and the early search engines relied on it heavily.
However, some Web builders began to abuse the system by stuffing the keyword meta tag with terms that had little or no relevance to the page content. The result was Web pages that got traffic by virtue of high rankings for common search terms, but those pages often had little or no content related to the keyword the visitor was searching for.
This pollution of the keyword meta tags eventually rendered them unreliable tools for indexing Web pages or ranking their relevance. As a result, all the major search engines now ignore the keyword meta tag completely or give its contents very low priority in their page-ranking algorithms.
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