I have a few SEO questions for the board. Please excuse the newbieness. I use a great plugin called All in One SEO written by Uberdose to adjust my articles title, description and keywords. Here is a screenshot: Should my title match my description all the time? Is this discouraged by search engines? I also use 8-10 keywords that vary by one or two for each article. What's the recommended number and should I cycle more than 1-2 keywords? Here is another screenshot: I ran a website SEO test at websitegrader.com. The report says that search engines pick up a part of what the article is talking about from the Headings. From an SEO point of view, are the headings different from the titles? Should I also adjust the headings to match the title? I'd like to get my articles picked up as efficiently as possible by Google and other search engines. I've read that what I need to do is 1) Put a keyword phrase in the title and if I use more than one keyword phrase separate it by a comma. 2) Put the keyword phrase somewhere in the article and preferably as anchor text. 3) Put the keyword phrase in the articles keywords, as in the first screenshot example. Are all three correct? I really apologize for all the newbiness in the questions.
You have to decide for which (one) keyword or keyword phrase you want to rank in search engine. The most important is to have exact keyword (phrase) in the title. Title in the HTML code will be <title>Title</title> . Headings are also important and it will look in the code as <h1>Heading</h1> . Headings are usually used as subtitles on your page or in the article. You use title tag once, h1 tag once, and then use h2 tags more times if necessary. Bolding of keywords in the text should also help. Keywords in the text are also important, but keyword density is not having so much weight as it had once, so it is OK, to use keywords naturally and no need to stuff the page with them. Description is to describe your content and you surely want to make it longer than the title. It's important that you use anchor text with your exact keyword in backlinks, in internal links and also in external links. But do not use the same keyword just in all links, since Gogle may consider this as spamming.
Can the exact keyword phrase come after a comma in the title? For example "my site name", "keyword phrase" ? Why do some people use more than one keyword? In my screenshots above, do you recommend me removing most of my keywords? On my blog the <h2> tag produces the post title, but the HTML <title> tag produces the title in the browser, should I make them match? Finally if I do all this, is it possible to rank in Google the same day if my site gets spidered? Apologies for all the questions again.
Title itself is a keyword. Whatewer you add after a coma will be another keyword. In your first example, I would retain only what I would expect someone will serch in SE. If I use 'Constipation causes and treatment', I have chance that someone will find me after looking for constipation, constipation causes, or constipation treatment. From your first example I would keep only 'Investing in silver', but you should decide for one, keyword or keyword phrase, which you should use it then exactly word after word in proper order. You can use other keywords in subtitles, anchor text... Your post titles will probably different, according to post content, but it is good if you often put your main keyword from site title in the post title. And some other keywords in next post titles. Your site will rank in Google for a certain keyword, when you'll get some backlinks, using that keyword in anchor text. On-page optimisation is mainly having good content and considering rules you already know. Meta tag keywords have NO effect in Google and I guess in Yahoo and MSN. Keyword description also has only small effect. It's title, anchor text in links, h tags, bolded text which matter. In this order somehow. Also, if you're talking about rawgreed.com...title of posts should be the first thing in the page body, I would move 'recent readers' and graphs in the right column.
Wow, thanks for the advice. I would have a problem with keeping only one keyword phrase throughout the entire site though. Do you mean only in the title for each article? If I had an article on Constipation and another on Silver, then each page would have a one word title and I should remove the general site title, is that correct? In your example: "'Constipation causes and treatment', I have chance that someone will find me after looking for constipation, constipation causes, or constipation treatment." Would a broad title narrow your SE ranking for just a single keyword phrase like constipation causes?
In first place you should think how a user would perform a search query, what keywords and what combination he would be using. Have a read on this title optimization article which might give you an idea how to make combination. Now, since you are using All In One SEO pack plugin, i would advice you to use the main keywords in the homepage title, while for the post pages make sure that THE post page title is first and than the sites title (or even better, the categories title).
You might want choose the keyword or keyword phrase for a page according to what people are typing in Google when search for silver. Think: will searcher, interested in silver, type 'silver' in Google, or will he/she try more exact keyword phrase, like investing in silver, or invest in silver. Any tinny change in search term gives different results, as you can see. Seobook keyword suggestion tool tells you how many searches for exact term was made lately in Google, Yahoo, MSN, so you can decide on basis on that what to chose. You might be impressed with amount of searches for 'silver', but this term has a lot more competition in Google than more specific terms... Your goal in Google is to come on 1st, 2nd, maybe 3rd page, all other is rather poor. To tell you the truth, I don't know theory about this. But Google results for constipation will show you titles of sites. Don't rely on the fact that 1st one has only 'constipation' in title and others have more. There are plenty ranking factors...all sites on first page are well established, rich content sites...You can't do all the job with manipulating the title. Backlinks from good sites are important. But search term 'Constipation causes and treatment' shows that first three sites have that exact keyword phrase in the title.