The following simple, but often overlooked tips on how to best choose keywords and phrases was written in coordination with the release of the Tags in the Head plugin for wordpress. This plugin allows the use of tags as meta keywords in a page’s HEAD section. While these tips can help, the best advice comes from google:
“Make pages for users, not for search engines.”
The concept of Tagging and the use of meta keywords, from an end point of view, is the same. Both provide a way for your readers to better find relevant information on your site. The better you have matched your keywords with the actual content of your site, the higher your site will rank in search engine result position (SERP), and the easier it will be for people to navigate within and around your site. It may seem obvious, but the higher your SERP for a given keyword, the more traffic you get. Therefore, choosing the best keywords and tags is of utmost importance. Here are some things to think about when tagging and choosing keywords:
- Try to figure out what someone would type into Google in order to find your site / identify what you have written about. This could be one word or a string of words (a phrase);
- Avoid using the same keyword repeatedly to describe all your content as it makes one post hard to distinguish from another. Repeating the same meta keyword several times may have its ranking decreased by a search engine trying to eliminate this practice;
- Avoid using ‘adult’ words or phrases unless your page is adult in nature. Doing otherwise may make search engines miscategorize your hard work or cause SE’s to not index your content at all;
- If you are competing in SE position, look at the meta tag keywords your competitors use. Maybe they have better identified the words or phrases people are using to search;
- Don’t use a competitors trademark, it could get you in trouble with the lawyers. For example, suppose you make shoes. Don’t put Nike in as your keywords because then you would be competing for them using their own name;
- Avoid using irrelevant words or phrases (the, is, click here, or, and);
- Ensure that whatever keywords or phrases you choose occur within the body of the page (the actual content). If the keywords don’t match the content, this could raise a flag in search engine algorithms;
- Don’t be afraid to go back and edit the keywords and tags of an old post;
In general, the consensus is that the less Keywords and phrases you can use and get away with, the better. Try to pick a couple ‘key phrases’ that are specific to what your content is about.
The rub: for best SEO, choose keywords and tags that are both relevant and unique to whatever it is your page is about and you’ll do much better than simply producing a massive list of words that are related to your subject.
References
Choosing Keywords
Matt Cutts
WikiPedia - Meta Tags
Webmaster Guidelines from Google
Appendix
A handy tool I recommend is the Search Engine Keyword Tracker & Keyword Ranking Tool made available for free by DigitalPoint. It allows you to enter in various URL’s the keywords you are trying to target for each one and watch your SERP change over time (hopefully). Take a look at the screenshots on their page for a better idea of how it works.
I’d appreciate anyone elses take on these or other ideas regarding selecting Keywords and Tagging, its very much an art.
09 Jun 06
1:50 am
Hi Kirk,
I have been follow up with your website on certain post, it is very impressive, especially on tags in the head and I am exploring some of the other plug-ins you recommended here. I am a new user of wordpress, abuot 1month old, if you are free come to my blog and give me some comments on the setup.
Few things I am interest to find out from you here:
1) How to change the header image?
2) About your navigation bar, do you use any plug in to manage it?
3) The colourful quotation that you use, what plug in you use here?
4) About the header image you put up before the adsense code above, are you using any plug in to manage the randomly display image? Is that any plugin to use so that can display different images, or it is your own customisation code you put in?
I hope you can help me for the above questions.
Thank you very much.
Steven
09 Jun 06
7:15 am
Hi Steven,
First let me tell you that I personally think that the stuff you are getting into on your website is bogus. The internet marketing stuff and the hard sell tactics… “If you don’t want to make 1000’s of dollars a day, STOP READING NOW!” Followed by various fake to suspicious personal endorsements… “I’ve used product X to leverage massive amounts of capital for my online, egold, e-service business. Thank you for creating an awesome product that all peoples of Earth will definitely appreciate.” That kind of stuff (Ok, I slightly over emphasized).
The only people who make money doing the things you are trying on your site(s) are the ones making up the ebooks touting how much money they make. Its a scam. Plus, you can find all that information for free at places like seochat and webmasterworld. Seriously ask yourself, are a you mean lean driven machine ready to market market market market your product and sell sell sell? If so, what are you really selling? Knowledge is free.
Anyway, thats my personal opinion. Good luck with it all, but I personally don’t think its a sustainable business practice. Also, you’ll note that I removed links to your website because I don’t want to endorse it in anyway. Nothing against you, just your product.
As to your questions:
I see you are using the regulus theme for wordpress, check the homepage for that theme where header image changing instructions can be found.
I do not use any plugins to manage my navigation bar. There are some that do this, but I like the freedom of doing it myself.
The colourful quotations are designed by me but inspired by others’ work. You can see how I do it by downloading the sawchuk scheme for K2 and looking at the test style post.
I use the adsense-deluxe plugin for wordpress which helps me manage my adsense code. Seperate to that I also use a php image randomizer to make the image appear before the adsense code. Both are free. Any php randomizer will do.
Good luck!
09 Jun 06
9:00 am
Hi buddy,
Thanks for your valuable feedbacks on my site. I am really appreciate that. However, I want to let you know, I am a newbies in IM, just a little bit more than 1 year old. Especailly in Asia (sure you can check which country I am coming from), there are very limited access to the content rich IM marketin in US. Not like you enviroment, you have a good start. You got to know all the technical stuffs, I am not even a programmer, just advertising sales background. Okay, stop giving excuses of not having the best infrastructure for myself.. - *wink* -
Anyway, my blog is for place to build some name & traffic for myself, it’s not ready to sell anything yet. If you were stay a bit longer in my blog you should know what I mean. This blog is really for beginner, it is not for your league or world class level playground. Coz in this part of world IM is still very very new, in infant stage I would say, so whether it will make money or not sure I can find out later. - *wink* -
Lastly, I thank you for the tips here, it is useful for me to take on further to improve on my site. I really like the fancy colorful comments that you use it now, really can make my blog more colourful.
oh yes, I agree with you the knowledge is free and can get online. However, our people is not really understand about this and they are still don’t know how to search for free information. They don’t mind paying money for people sell the ready info to them. So, it is a market here. So, I have done so analysis about what’s happening in this part of the world, so, if you see some opportunity here and you want to extend your service, mayb we can have some discussion about “possible working together” to tap this virgin market.
Ok… thanks anyway (I remove my site url here so that you don’t need to remove it again!)
Steven
23 Jun 06
5:42 pm
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15 Aug 06
12:43 am
Looks good! I’m impressed, must have taken a lot of work to get to this point. Just wanted to say I’m enjoying it!
23 May 07
6:58 am
Hello Sir,
How can I find the same keyword in meta tag from whole site, if it is used twice on a particular page. Which software or technique can I used.
Thanks,
Leophil
04 Jul 07
3:03 pm
Personally I think meta keywords are a waste of time, though it can’t do any harm in having them. I say that time is better spent on things like titles, URLs and content.
Getting a blog post to rank isn’t hard to do. Pick your phrase and make sure it’s in the title, meta desc, URL, H1, and first paragraph of your post. Use the phrase again a few times on the page, and include variations of the phrase.
The hard part is doing all this without making it sound cheesy. You can still get a page ranking without doing any of these things, but it may take a lot more links and time.
It’s the little changes that make the difference - I found I got a stack more traffic on my cooking blog by naming my post ‘easy chicken marinade’ instead of ‘chicken marinade’.