SEO - Keyword Optimization

Keyword is a term that a human being entered into a search engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of between two & five words. Such phrases may be called keyword phrases, search phrases, query phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive.

There are following concepts associated to Keywords which helps in optimizing keywords on a website page.

Keyword Frequency:
This is calculated as how often does a keyword show in a site's title or description. You don't want to go overboard with frequency, however, since on some engines if you replicate a word too many times, you'll be penalized for "spamming" or keyword stuffing.

In general though, repeat your keyword in the text as many times as you can get away with, and up to 3-7 times in your META tags.

Keyword Weight:
This refers to the number of keywords appearing on your Web page compared to the total amount of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this when determining the rank of your Web site for a particular keyword search.

One technique that often works well is to make some smaller pages, generally just a paragraph lengthy, which emphasize a particular keyword. By keeping the overall number of words to a minimum, you will raise the "weight" of the keyword you are emphasizing.

Keyword Proximity:
This refers to the placement of keywords on a Web page in relation to each other or, in some cases, in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword.

For search engines that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected phrase .house loans. will outrank a quote that mentions .house mortgage loans. assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans".

Keyword Prominence:
A measure of how early or high up on a web page the keywords are found. Having keywords in the first heading and in the earliest paragraph (first 15 words or so) on a page are best.

Keyword Placement:
Where your keywords are placed on a web page is very important. For example, in most engines, placing the keywords in the Title tag of the page or in the Heading tags will give it more relevancies. On some search engines, placing keywords in the link text, the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.