Over 80% of all online interactions begin with a keyword search; that is, the key words typed into the search box. When we are trying to find something online, we start with a search. The nature of search has become more sophisticated over the past few years, as people have learned to hone in on the specific phrases that their target site is using. So will your website show up on their search results? Only if your pages are chock full of matching keywords and key phrases.
Back in the early 90’s, searching the internet was a frustrating proposition. Part of the frustration was in learning to think the way a computer would deliver. Instead of ‘I want to find some information about why my leg hurts’, the searcher had to learn to collapse this desire into just a few words. And hope that someone out there had used the same chosen words. Search engines actually taught us to use them: after numerous dead ends, we’re like the monkey pulling the lever for a morsel. Over time, we get very good at searching. Nowadays, the most sophisticated searchers use 3 or 4 word key phrases. {Update 09//12: According to SEO experts at NGS Marketing, “Google and Bing have constantly been increasing the number of key phrases that they use their local ranking algorithm for. All hints and common sense point to the fact that they are going to continue doing so.”}
In the same regard, website developers also became very good at including numerous phrases around key words so their website could reach the broadest possible audience. That is your job –to include the broadest range of keywords and keyword phrases that your potential clients and customers could come up with. At the same time,with respect to the search engine bots, you also need to repeat these keyword phrases throughout your text. The bots read your text and categorize or index your site based on the keywords they read most frequently. In a nutshell, they deliver up what you say you are all about.
So what are you all about? A fun tool to use to find out is called Wordle. Wordle takes the text from your page and creates a word cloud like the one above (I see I used the word ‘actually’ a bit much.) This tells you what the page says, what words are most prominent and what are not. Does your Wordle cloud reflect your intention? Or do you need to make some adjustments to your text? And if you do need to make some adjustments, what should you actually be saying?
Google has a keyword tool that will give you some idea of the terms people are searching for around specific keywords. Using the Google Keyword Tool, you can find out what phrases are the most heavily searched both globally and locally. And contained within that tool is another tool called Insights, which gives you an idea of the trends around a particular phrase. Insights shows up when you scroll over a keyword.
One thing to watch out for is that your text is readable and interesting to the reader. You don’t want to create text that appears to be written for a bot. Humans are not bots. So be thoughtful in your writing but keep focused and clear about your topic. If you focus too much on keyword density, you may tend to write content which people would not be interested in reading, and changing the terms that were helping the page appear relevant for many 3-4 word search queries.
You want to have a density of your keywords of about 1 to 3% – this is the ratio of your specific key words to all text on the page. Much more than that and the bots think you’re spamming or ‘keyword stuffing’. Less than that and they think you’re just confused. Use the SEOBook Keyword Density Tool to get an idea of where your density stands.
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