This is something I've been confused about for a while. I'm a novice to SEO, and I know keywords are important. I know people will debate whether meta tags or descriptions count for much and if so how much, but the biggest confusion I have right now is something utterly simple: what constitutes a keyword??? Obviously, I know what a keyword IS. But, here's where it gets tricky for me. What about compound words and composite phases??? For example, if your site sells wholesale catnip, do you put "wholesale catnip" as a single keyword? Separate keywords ("wholesale, catnip"), or all of the above ("wholesale catnip, wholesale, catnip)??? Must I combine words in every conceivable combination to get relevance? Or can I just list terms separately and will the search engine automatically combine them when it searches. Like, must I enter my keywords as "foreign films" (one keyword) or "foreign, films" (2 keyword) and will the search engine still know enough to rank me high when a search for "films" is conducted" and will it know enough to also rank me high in the second case when someone searches for "foreign films"? What about hyphenations? I see some people do the following for keywords: "wholesale catnip, wholesale-catnip, wholesale, catnip, wholesale pets, pets, wholesale-pets" etc. I'm worried about not getting enough density and not getting all the permutations, but I'm also worried about over-thinking it (at best) or (at worst) getting flagged for keyword stuffing. How do I make sure I'm using all the right keywords to get me noticed on all conceivable alterations of the searches I want to target, while also avoiding anything that will just be a waste of time or perhaps actually HURT me by making me look unscrupulous???? I obviously need the seasoned advice of an SEO guru! Please advise and educate me, oh wise ones.
This is a loaded question. Lets start from the begging. First, if you talk to somebody that is debating whether or not title tags or meta descriptions count, stop talking to them. There isn't much room for debate there. Well developed titles, descriptions, h tags, etc is the very basic starting point of every SEO process. The answer to your second question is not so simple. But I will share with you a few pointers that are considered common knowledge. After developing unique titles and descriptions for every page of your site, you have support those titles with well developed content. How does one define well developed content or determine if the keyword density is too high? There isn't a well defined guideline that the search engines share with us. My word of advice is to ALWAYS keep the end user in mind. Balance and common sense are the best rules of thumb when it comes to a lot of things in life, and optimization is no different. If your content does not flow naturally or sounds too SEOish, it is probably underdeveloped. With that said you don't need to list every conceivable combination of key word phrases. Search engines are 'smarter' than you think. They 'understand' synonyms and related words (i.e. guns and fire arms), so all you have to do is concentrate on providing fresh, original, relevant content to your users and will be in great shape. Hope this helps. Good luck.
worried about over-thinking it (at best) or (at worst) getting flagged for keyword stuffing. information to SEO updated
have you try to use this google keyword tool to find best suggestion ? : https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Us the adwords tool, then download a free trial of Market samurai and you will get what your looking for. Thanks, Robert
The adwords just shows you limited things on keywords, just really how many times its looked up etc, but market samurai shows you your competition and how many links they have, how old the domain is etc, shows you what you need to get to be on the top rankings. I use Adwords tool for getting keywords then I add them to Market samurai. Its very simple process to view things, but the hard process is the SEO part of getting ranked high, I do SEO all day, let me know if you have more questions, I'll help you out on your research. It can be difficult your first time doing it. I go after 300 keywords per site, we get good rankings for the majority of them.
Here are posts that talks about picking a niche keyword and applying SEO 1/ Picking a niche keyword and how to apply SEO 2/ Indepth keyword market analysis 3/ Tools use to spy on your competitors
Meta keywords have nothing to do with your rankings in google. so don't worry about those. Keep your title tags 45 characters or less, and within each page of your site, make all the keywords different. Don't use the same keywords over and over for each page. You can target more keywords to your home page initially. But yes if you were selling catnip I would use a title tags on your homepage like this <title> catnip, sales, information, FAQ, resources, images, products, reviews <title> For your other pages go through the same process for your other KW's
just try to focus on the keyphrase. I think it should cover the keywords since wholesale and catnip are contained in your keyphrase.
keywords, title , meta tags are the most important thing for both off page and on page optimization, so you have to take keywords related to content , authenticate and preffer to take small dencity, you can find keywords by adwords (GOOGLE), wordze,keyword tracker etc.................
Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far to this discussion. This is great stuff. Special thanks to Cheburashka, Nuwavonline, Robmena, and Bobarkle. I'm always a little suspicious of product recommendations, however, and offers of private help. It seems more often than not people promoting a particular software package are either doing so because it's the only thing they personally have used, or because they are selling it. I'm willing to shell out a small cash investment on software that would be useful well into the future, but only under specific circumstances and if it is really either a BIG help or a NEED. Budget is tight. Likewise, I have found that whenever someone offers to help me out with something, it's code for "I want to sell you my services" lol. So, just to be upfront and avoid wasting time: I'm interested in free, good-spirited advice and honest help and education. Not a solicitation.. I'm also willing to invest in software, maybe, but not right away and not as a magic bullet. I should mention that the site already has a high Google Ranking. If I search the site title it comes up with "I'm feeling lucky". The most important search phrase results in a 4th place ranking. Not bad at all. Others, I need to check, but the idea is to do BETTER, and the site is definitely NOT SEO friendly since it hasn't been optimized for years and years. I guess my big question with key phrases is that I want to know whether the key phrase "google search" counts as a single keyword, 2 keywords, or 3. If my keyword is "computer monitor" does this get PARSED as separate words, or register as one or what. I basically want to know if a keyword of "jasmine tea" will bring results for "jasmine" as well as "tea" and carry the most weight in its full form, or what. What are the rules of thumb regarding composite key phrases for searches you care about and compound words? If my site sells organic fruit and I want to make sure we come up both for people searching for "organic" and people searching for "fruit", must I list these separately? If I want to make sure we are very high for people searching explicitly for "organic fruit" do I need to list "organic fruit" as a unique keyword, or will listing these two words as separate keywords do the same thing? I just want to know the basics of keywording because I don't know just HOW smart the SEs are and just HOW they look at, break down, and catalog keywords in relation to site ranking. I suppose no one REALLY knows this, except Google. But I know you all have more information about it than I do. So what are your typical strategies? Will Ad Word answer my questions and make this more straight forward for me? I plan on using it, I just want to make sure I understand the basics first.
yeah sure you can get answers of ur all questions related to keywords , by adwords keyword tool, estimator by you can get the value of that perticular keyword....