How Keywords Affect Your Search Engine Rankings

Before giving you some tips about how to affect your search engine ranking with keywords, let’s first define what a keyword is. A keyword is any important and relevant word used to describe what your site is about, what information you provide there, and the types of things seekers of your products or services may be thinking of. You might sell jewelry on your site, for example, but instead of only listing the types of jewelry (e.g. necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings, etc.), you might also want to list gemstones like amethyst, opal and exotic ones like alexandrite or malachite.

Once you have determined your keywords (no more than 30 to be on the safe side), consider prioritizing them from most important to least important. Make sure that this prioritized list then is included in META tags in your source code. Some search engine “spiders” may only index the first 15 or so of your keywords, which is why you want them prioritized.

META tags, however, are not the be all and end all of keywords affecting search engine ranking. Now take your top 3-5 prioritized keywords and handily weave them into the content of your home page, particularly within the first 100 words, using them more than once if you can. Content and frequency are critical to search engine spiders. They have bearing on search engine relevance, whereby the search engine assumes that the first words on the page are the most important ones. Be sure that the content appears as text and not as a graphic (unless you also incorporate ALT tags) or as JavaScript.

Also important to relevance are page titles. Pages with keywords appearing in the title are assumed to be more relevant than others in the site.

The industry authority on search engine position is Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch, which you can check out at for more helpful hints and tips.

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