Keywords

 Now that we are moving along lets start to get into how this all works.

To a person using a Search Engine they type a term into the respective Search Engines search box and hit enter when they are looking for something. This is called a Search Term or Search Phrase depending on how many words appear in the query string.

To the Search Engine as well as to those making websites this is called a Keyword or a Keyword Phrase.

The search engine will return a list of results from it's index that match that term similar to those below. With the most relevant result at position #1.

As you can see wikipedia is the first result and it actually has 2 listings which is called an indented listing as the second is counted as being relevant to the search term which is why it also appears and is indented from the left hand margin to indicate it is from the same domain as the previous listing.

Lets have a look at the Cache of the indented page and see why it is considered as being relevant for the term Camels. Simply click on the Cached Link to get to the Google cached page which is what the pages ranking results are based on.

Once you have clicked on the Cached link the first piece of information that interests you is that they have highlighted every instance of the term you used in Yellow.

Also that they have set it up to show you that, tells you it is an important factor.

Notice we used the Plural Camels and that they have not highlighted the singular version, being Camel, as you can clearly see next to the right of the Wiki Globe Logo. Though the singular instances of the term Camel will help in identifying the page as being about Camels.

As we go through the page we can see that all occurrences of our Search Term has been Highlighted in yellow as in the image below.

The main piece of information I am trying to get across here is that when a person does a Search it is called a Search Term.

As a website owner that same term on your page is called a Keyword.

You will want to Rank well for your Keyword/s or Keyword phrases in the search engines so that anyone looking for what you websites' pages are about, will find your page in the search engines results, also known as the Index. The traffic you get this way is called Organic Traffic.

The amount of times the search term appears on your page is called Keyword Density. Remember that the Search Term is called a keyword or keyword phrase on your actual web page.

You will want to have a sprinkling of your Keyword or phrase on your page to help the Search Engine easily identify what your page is about while writing the content so that it makes sense to any person visiting your site. You will also want to use synonyms in your body copy in general as it helps your page to rank for those terms as well if a visitor uses that as their initial search term at the Search Engine's search box. By doing that you can sometimes pickup a lot more visitors who are looking for what your page's content is about, though it is not necessary to do.

Also using your Keyword too many times is called Keyword Stuffing and will hurt how well your site Ranks in the various Search Engines. A good rule of thumb is to use your term often in the beginning as well as throughout your page, while keeping it so that it reads well to a visitor.

The above is looking at Keywords in general and how they appear in your body copy or content.

Yet even though your body copy is the most important aspect to a visitor to your website, it counts for less than your off page SEO efforts when it comes to the Google Algo. So our next step is to look at what some of those factors are and identify some parts that will help our pages to Rank in the Organic search results.

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