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Using keywords in the text of your pages

By Yelena Shapiro

There are many issues to consider when placing keywords in the text of your pages. Most search engines index the full text of each page, so it's vital to place keywords throughout your text. However, each search engine uses different ranking algorithms. Difficult though it may be, you need to keep all of them in mind.

General rules

Make sure your main page is full of keywords. It has a higher chance of being indexed than your other pages, and it will be the only page indexed by some engines.

Some engines rank a page high if it has at least 100 words , so make that your minimum. Directories include pages based on the quality of their content, so make sure your pages aren't simply lists of keywords.

Key concepts

When creating your pages' content, keep the following four concepts in mind: Keyword prominence, proximity, density and frequency.

Keyword Prominence

The best place to place keywords in the text is at the top of each page , preferably the main page. The closer your keywords are to the start of the page or the start of a sentence, the better. This concept is known as "keyword prominence." Y ou'll frequently see it used to describe search engines' algorithms.

Some engines also say the bottom of the page should contain keywords as well.

Beware! Search engines view pages differently than people do. Here's an example:

At Widgets International, our business is selling widgets.

You may think you did pretty well by placing the keyword "widgets" at the top of your page. A search engine, however, sees your page this way:

Home About Us Products At Widgets International, our business is selling widgets

Now your keyword placement doesn't look as good as it did before. Try to place keyword-rich text at the very top of your page. If you are using images at the top of your page, make sure to include ALT tags.

Keyword Proximity

Some engines, such as Google , use the concept of "keyword proximity" as part of their ranking formulas. As suggested by the name, "keyword proximity" means the how close keywords are to each other . Put your keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.

Here's an example:

abc company has been selling puppy food for over 50 years.

abc company Inc has been selling food for your puppies for over 50 years.

The two keywords used are " puppy " and " food ." If a user searches for " puppy food ," the first sentence will rank higher because its keywords are closer to each other.

Keyword Density

This concept, also known as keyword weight, measures the relationship of keywords to other text . The higher the percentage of keywords in relationship to other text, the better.

Here's an example of how it's measured. Let's assume the keyword phrase is " puppy food ."

Puppy food is our primary business.

Since " is", "our, " and other stop words are usually not counted, there are three "words" in the sentence: " puppy food," "primary," and "business ." " Puppy food" makes 1/3 of the sentence, or 33%.

Keyword density is almost never this high. The recommended density is 3-7% . This means that your keyword should repeat 3-7 times for every 100 words.

Sound easy? Imagine having 10 keywords and trying to repeat each one 3-7 times per 100 words of text -- it's practically impossible. Instead, pick two or three of your most important keywords and try to use them 3-7 times for every 100 words.

Keyword Frequency

Keyword frequency is a measure of the number of times keywords occur within a page's text. It's tied to the concept of keyword density. Search engines want to see more than one repetition of a keyword in your text to make sure it's not an isolated case. The recommended repetition is 3-7 times.

Avoid spam

Don't be tempted to use tiny or invisible text to put keywords at the beginning of your pages. Search engines define this behavior as spam and can reject your site for it.

An overview

Keywords in page text

• Include at least 100 words in page text
• Use keywords at the beginning of the page
• Place keywords close to each other
• Repeat keywords 3-7 times for every 100 words