Key words selection [Archive]

sem_services

12-15-2003, 11:06 PM

Hi All,

Which key words should I put in my key word tag for each page. Should I pick every word in my content except "the, and, is" type words? I want to improve my tags so any help is appreciated.

Thanks

minstrel

12-15-2003, 11:23 PM

Which key words should I put in my key word tag for each page. Should I pick every word in my content except "the, and, is" type words?
Well, first you are bound to hear sooner or later that you shouldn't bother because search engines don't pay any attention to the keyword meta tags any more anyway.

Now that that's out of the way, I still have keywords for every page because, as long as you don't do it in such a way that it might be interpreted as "spamming", "stuffing", or "spoofing", it can't hurt and it may be helpful to any SEs who do pay attention to them.

However, what you do not want to do is duplicate everything on the page as a keyword - pick a limited number of keywords, and probably more importantly keyphrases, that people are likely to use to find you when they use a search engine. Do this individually and as uniquely as possible for each page on your site - i.e., don't just pick a few phrases and slam them into every page - pick phrases or words that are descriptive of that particular page...

sem_services

12-16-2003, 12:19 AM

Thanks Minstrel,

I had keywords on some pages that weren't relevant to that paticular content, so I figured it couldnt hurt to clean it up a bit.

Thanks again

ron sheldrick

12-23-2003, 10:12 AM

Totally agree with Minstrel. Also try getting search keyword phrases into your TITLE & DESCRIPTION

ronniethedodger

12-23-2003, 02:10 PM

I have a plug-in for my Html editor that reviews the document (excluding Html tags and such) and gives me a listing of the most used words in the content and the total times that they appear. It also writes the META tag in a preview pane so that I can cut & paste it into my page.

The META tag is sorted in descending order starting with the word with the most occurances.

But as mentioned before, the keyword tag is probably on it's way out...still some SE's do use it.

With that said...this plug-in still has a certain advantage if you will notice. It is reporting back to me the "keyword density" on my page.

This reporting helps in determining what phrases and words are appearing more than others -- and seeing this enables me to adjust the density within the content itself. I will rewrite then rerun the plug-in until I get the desired density.

Since SE's are focusing on the written page more and the density of certain words, using a utility such as this plug-in will help quite a bit.

jaca

12-23-2003, 08:18 PM

Hi Ron,

What is the name of the utlity you are using? Sounds like it would be great for optimizing my site.

Jan

sem_services

12-23-2003, 08:51 PM

Thanks for all the great tips. Ron I would also like to know the plug-in you use.
So far my keyword search,which is regional to Michigan, has put me in the top 3 to 4 positions, but whats confusing me is my two word search. Is this due to my PR? I show up around 300th+. Other sites show up through links that I also am listed, but I dont show up. We are on the exact same page. Does anyone have any insite as to why this happens?

Thanks

ronniethedodger

12-23-2003, 09:29 PM

The plug-in is for the Html Editor that I use. I use Html-Kit which is available at www.chami.com/html-kit/

The plug-in is available at the same site at http://www.chami.com/html-kit/plugins/info/wordcount/

Both the editor and the plug-in are available for free. The editor is not WYSIWYG but has a preview pane to instantly check your work with.

Sorry the plug-in only works inside of the editor, it is not stand-alone. Although there is C++ source code available for it at the same url as the plug-in.

The editor is top notch...but if that is not for you, then try this Google Search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=word+counting+software+utilities&as_q=html) <--- click here now
This will bring up some results to point you in the right direction. The results are for word counting software utilities...and I think i asked for html in the phrase too.

minstrel

12-23-2003, 10:52 PM

So far my keyword search,which is regional to Michigan, has put me in the top 3 to 4 positions, but whats confusing me is my two word search. Is this due to my PR? I show up around 300th+. Other sites show up through links that I also am listed, but I dont show up. We are on the exact same page. Does anyone have any insite as to why this happens?
What's the keyword that gets you in the top 4? and what's the phrase that you're buried for?

ronniethedodger

12-23-2003, 11:06 PM

Other sites show up through links that I also am listed, but I dont show up. We are on the exact same page. Does anyone have any insite as to why this happens?

I missed this when I replied to your other question.

It is confusing me a little. Are you referring to link pages (exchanges) showing up ahead of your site in the results? And just on the two-word phrases?

If you are, I have the same thing happening on one of my two-word keyphrases. Last time I checked I was at #54...and there were 4 linkpages with my link on them in the top 50. One of those results was also on page one.

The linkpage sites, in all cases, had nothing to do with the keyphrase. The keyphrase only appears in the text for my link on those linkpages. And they are showing up ahead of my site, which is what those links are pointing at.

Strange, eh?

sem_services

12-24-2003, 09:15 AM

My key word search for "bathtub refinishing Michigan, tile refinishing Michigan, porcelain refinishing Michigan, fiberglass refinishing Michigan, and others" give me good results. Bathtub refinishing, sink refinishing, or any two word search gives me terrible results. Notice in Google one company is listed by a link, Construction Industry. I'm on the same page as they are, and other sites as well, but we dont show up. So the links Pr doesnt help me as far as that goes. This is what I'm confused about.

minstrel

12-24-2003, 10:30 AM

My key word search for "bathtub refinishing Michigan, tile refinishing Michigan, porcelain refinishing Michigan, fiberglass refinishing Michigan, and others" give me good results. Bathtub refinishing, sink refinishing, or any two word search gives me terrible results.
But that's exactly how it should be: You're a regional service. People searching for services in or near Michigan may start by typing in two words but once they see 3 million results for England, Australia (do they have bathtubs in Australia?), Canada, Germany, or even California and Florida they are likely to add that 3rd word to narrow the search - then they get you, which is what you want.

sem_services

12-24-2003, 11:07 AM

Actually I thats what I want for now, but in the near future I'll be offering training manuals and possibly DIY kits. Would you recommend a new web site for those items or enhance my existing site?

minstrel

12-24-2003, 11:45 AM

ronniethedodger

12-24-2003, 01:02 PM

But that's exactly how it should be: You're a regional service. People searching for services in or near Michigan may start by typing in two words but ...

...they will add on the word Michigan, or perhaps a city like Detroit. Don't limit your content to just the State name. Drop some names of the more populated cities in and around your service area. In fact create a page dealing with your service area. Perhaps suffix your footer area with those city names too.

Now that we have the Regional aspect of it dealt with, I noticed the you cited samples of the word "refinishing". Some people would use the words "remodel", "refurbish", "restore", and some others. Don't focus in on just one interpretation of the word "refinish" -- or form of the word itself (past, present, or future tenses).

ronniethedodger

12-24-2003, 01:42 PM

Actually I thats what I want for now, but in the near future I'll be offering training manuals and possibly DIY kits. Would you recommend a new web site for those items or enhance my existing site?
Not a new website but add new pages and optimize the keywords for those to include the terms "training manual", "do-it-yourself" along with the other terms.

I don't know about that. My feeling is that there will be two distinct entities here....Regional Services and Shippable Products. But having both on one site is doable, you need to build the site with these differences in mind and not cross-link them. In effect, treat them like two different sites.

If you are really serious about the whole thing though, you may want to get your own domain for that site.

I noticed that you are using a free service right now. Having your own domain and having it hosted (paying for it) will go a long ways in terms of professionalism and credibility.

Once you do get going on this and start promoting your training manuals and DIY kits, you may want to tone down on the GoogleAds and make your product stand out.

BTW, look at some of the wording in your ads. I noticed some other neat keywords like "reglazing". I would of never thought of that. Watch your competitors titles for some of these.

More importantly you have a unique advantage over a lot of your competitors, and that is you are the site owner/developer/writer. Listen to your face-to-face Customers who walk in, especially their opening statements. What are they asking for and how are they asking for it?

brettgodfrey

01-19-2004, 12:44 PM

Hi Jan

Hi Ron,

What is the name of the utlity you are using? Sounds like it would be great for optimizing my site.

Jan

I have a keyword density analyser on my site http://www.godfreyhart.com/analyser.php which I use to look at the density of all words on the page.

Mind you I still struggle to get ranked. The whole SEO business is hurting my head :(

brettgodfrey

01-19-2004, 12:44 PM

ronniethedodger

01-19-2004, 01:58 PM

I have a keyword density analyser on my site http://www.godfreyhart.com/analyser.php which I use to look at the density of all words on the page.

That is pretty cool Brett!! Did you write that script yourself?

Here is another one you might want to have a look at too. This one does a different type of reporting than yours. It includes verb counts, stop word counts, and 1-2-3 word density reporting. http://www.stargeek.com/keyword_density.php

For the programmer types....here is the source for the above analyzer http://www.stargeek.com/php_scripts.php?script=21.

Another analyzer that compares your page against one of your competitors pages to see what they are doing differently than you http://www.keywordcount.com/. An example of one of their reports http://www.keywordcount.com/examples.php3.

More:

http://www.keyworddensity.com
http://www.jimworld.com/tools/keyword-analyzer/

Please note that these tools are meant only to help give you a general idea of the frequency with which words appear in web pages. There is no guarantee that these results are accurate, nor that the results represent the indexing logic of any particular search engine. Other factors such as inbound links to any of these pages and other criteria will effect your overall placement in the SERPs.

Mel

01-19-2004, 04:41 PM

Another way of looking at the keyword density (and also has the advantage of showing locations) is to view your page online with the google toolbar highlight feature turned on, then add the keywords to the search bar but do not search just refresh the page.
This highlights each word in the search term in a different color, which I find useful.

ronniethedodger

01-19-2004, 06:00 PM

Yea Mel...I do that too sometimes. It does not show you the words in Alt tags or Title arguments of links and images though. But what it does though (very visually IMO) is show you the placement of the words throughout the entire text. It even highlights variations on the words too, alternate forms.

brettgodfrey

01-20-2004, 04:16 AM

That is pretty cool Brett!! Did you write that script yourself?

Here is another one you might want to have a look at too....

Hi Ron.
Yes I did write the script.
After being frustrated with many of the analysers I found on the web which did not meet my requirements I thought I should write my own.

I'm sure that this one will be added to someone elses frustration pile :)

If nothing else it was a useful excercise that taught me a lot (except how to get up those page rankings!).

Thanks for the other links. I shall be checking them out during the day.

ppeter

01-23-2004, 08:09 AM

I was wondering about the size of body text and keyword density. What are everyones thoughts on optimal number of characters/words in the body text and the keywords density/frequency for the body text?

Would you include alt tags and such like in this as well?

How do the search engines look at these things?