CT Biz Blogs

The short answer: Keywords are the most frequently used significant words on a web page. To a search engine, this is what the page is about.

The longer answer: When librarians come up with keywords, they are describing what the book, article, whatever, is about. That’s what keywords mean to them. Those actual words may or may not be in the text.

But on the web it’s slightly different. That’s because, while people can abstract from the text to come up with descriptive words, search engines can’t. They typically use automated programs (’bots) that crawl through your site to index the contents. Those bots can count very well, they just can’t think.

To them, the significant words (not the common stuff like “the” or “and”) used with the highest frequency are the keywords which tell it what the page is about.

So, one way to help your ranking in the list of search engine results is to frequently use the words with which you’d like someone typing search terms into Google or Yahoo! to find you.

The trick is to do this well — not to hammer readers with the keywords, repeated over and over until they get highway hypnosis from reading your post. And not to put a string of disconnected words at the bottom of the page. Or worse, hide the words by using the same font color as the page background so that no one but ‘bots will see them. That last can get you kicked out of search engine results altogether, when discovered.

But there’s nothing wrong with ending your posts with a standard sentence “signature,” which contains your contact information, or a reminder of what services you offer.

And the great thing about blogs, if you’re posting regularly, is that your keyword count will build as you continue to bestow your words of wisdom on the grateful masses.

Of course, there’s more to it than that, because you can have words on the page that readers can see, and you can have words in the web page code, that only machines (or curious people who bother to view source) can see.

Those are the meta tags, and they’re a topic for another day.

Added 3/15/06: I found a great post by Liz Strauss of Successful Blog on checking your content for keywords.