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Most search engines index the full text of each page, so you should put your keywords throughout your text. However, each search engine uses different ranking algorithms. And that’s the really hard part--difficult though it may be, you need to keep all of them in mind.

General rules

Your main page should be full of keywords because that page has a higher chance of being indexed than other pages. And for some search engines, it will be the only page that is indexed.

Some engines will rank your page highly if it has at least 100 words on it, so consider that your minimum. Directories include pages based on the quality of their content, so make sure your pages aren't just lists of keywords. If you do that, you risk not getting in the big directories AND you will irritate readers—they won’t come back.

Important design concepts

When you create your pages' content, pay attention to:

* Keyword prominence
* Proximity
* Density
* Frequency


The thing about keyword prominence is that the best place to place keywords in your text is at the top of each page, preferably the main page. The closer your keywords appear to the start of the page or the start of a sentence, the better. You'll frequently see “keyword prominence” used to describe search engines' algorithms. Be aware that some engines also say the bottom of the page should contain keywords as well.

It gets more complicated. Search engines view pages differently than people do. Here's an example:



Home About Us Products Contact
Chrome. We’re all about chrome. Chrome bumpers, chrome trinkets, we love chrome.


Now, you may think you did pretty good by putting your keyword, which was obviously “chrome”, at the top of your page. A search engine, however, sees your page this way:

Home About Us Products Contact Chrome We’re all about chrome Chrome bumpers chrome trinkets we love chrome


Now your keyword placement doesn't look nearly as good as it did before, does it? So the moral of the story is: try to put keyword-rich text at the very top of your page. If you put images at the top of your page, make sure to include ALT tags so the search engine ignores them.

Now, about keyword proximity. Some engines, such as Google, use keyword proximity as part of their ranking formulas. So what’s it mean? Keyword proximity refers to how close keywords are to each other. You want to put your keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.

Here's an example:


Meow Mix sells the very best cat food as far as taste tests of actual cats are concerned.

versus

Meow Mix scored number one in taste tests to see what kind of food is really preferred by the typical cat.


The two keywords are "cat" and "food." If a user searches for "cat food," the first sentence will rank higher because its keywords are closer to each other. Why do search engines do this? Because if you’re searching for “running shoes”, a page that contains “running shoes” is probably relevant, but a page that contains, “I was running late for work and forgot to put on my good shoes,” probably is not.

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