What are Keywords / Key phrases?

Keywords are words, which a user enters into a particular search engine or directory in order to find information relating to the subject of his interest. A key phrase is a combination of keywords and adjectives

Why are Keywords important for search engine optimization ?

The keywords form the basis for any web site as they greatly impact in the search engine listing and ranking. Wondering how? Let us straight away dive into an example, which clears our doubts. We are well aware that a normal web surfer keys in a search keyword in a directory or a search engine to find the sites relating to the subject of his / her interest. Keywords are useful in determining the Meta tags of a page, the content of a page, the image names of a website and the links in a website. Keywords are the single most important aspect in important component of search engine optimization (not to be confused with meta tags). In fact companies dealing in search engine optimization services spend considerable time and effort to determine relevant keywords.

Assume that a user is interested in purchasing cheap computer peripherals; he would type in "cheap computer peripherals" in a search engine. All the sites related to the search key phrase would be listed in the search engine result. Now if the user types in "low priced computer peripherals", the same sites, which appeared in the first search result need not appear again in the search result for the new search key phrase. From this we can infer that the probability of a site getting listed in a search result to some extent is dependent on the keywords and key phrases used. Also different users may use different search key phrases or keywords while searching. A site named computerperipherals may get listed for a key phrase "Cheap computer peripherals" typed by user 'A' and the same may not be listed for the key phrase "Low priced computer peripherals" typed by user 'B' in the search result. Why? Because the search engine searches for documents or pages containing the key phrase only "Cheap" as the keyword and returns those documents or web pages that contain the keyword "Cheap". Since the site used "Cheap" as the keyword and did not use "low priced" even once in any one of the pages, it gets listed for the former search query. Finally keywords or key phrases to some extent are useful in determining the relevance and the search engine ranking of a site.

What should be there in Keywords?

The keywords / key phrases should primarily describe and determine the content and the relevance of the page in which they are placed. The keywords / key phrases may contain the appropriate technical words relative to the subject and can also include any adjectives relating to the context. To ensure top search engine rankings a careful research about the keywords keeping the end user in perspective is extremely important.

How to define a Keyword?

For effective search engine optimization of your website keywords should be formulated for each and every page. Define the keywords and key phrases that best describe the content of the page. Put yourself in the shoes of the web visitor and frame the keywords that a user will key in to find sites similar to yours. In this way, you can phrase relevant keywords in a very reliable and easy manner for each page. Believe me the way to get top search engine rankings is to concentrate on keywords.

Present day relevance of Keywords

In the good old days, almost all the search engines used to rely heavily on Meta keywords, key phrases, keyword density and proximity. Keywords played a very major role in judging the ranking of the site in the search engine result. The present scenario has changed and each search engine has developed its own algorithm in ranking a web site. For example, Google relies mainly on the page rank and link popularity. Most of the search engines are now tending towards more advanced algorithms. Even though the relevance of keywords has decreased, they undoubtedly form the basis for effective search engine optimization.