Keywords: Finding Them, How to Use Them, Keyword Density

Category: Web Development Author: User Image

Gary R. Hess

The next step in search engine optimization is keywords, finding them, how to use them and the density they need.

How to find keywords

In a previous article we took a look at what SEO tools can be used to find quality keywords for your website. What it comes down to is having a general idea of what you wish to rank for, then type in the words and presto! More keywords.

It is also important to stay up to date with trends. If you own a lyrics website, stay up to date with recently released songs and new artists. Not only will this benefit your readers, but it will also benefit your rankings.

How to use keywords

While finding the right keywords may be easy for some sites, figuring out how to use them is a whole other ball game.

What is important for keyword rankings:

Using them within the title tag
Using them within the header tags (h1, h2, h3)
Using them in inbound links
Using them in outbound links
Using them with the strong tag
Using them with the em tag
Using the keywords within the content at a certain density

What keyword density is accurate?

Although no one really knows the correct keyword density of an article, there are few agreements SEOs make:

You shouldn’t use the same word more than three times within the title, keywords meta or description meta.
Keyword density within links, strong, and em tags is not separately calculated than that within the content. So although they count for more in search engines, the density doesn’t matter. So if you have 10 links with the same word pointing to different pages, it will work all the same. Although, that isn’t recommended since it will set off a different spam filter, as will including your entire content section in a strong tag.
Writing for the audience will almost always give you a good keyword density. Just be sure to work your keywords into the conversation, but make it sound normal. If you are really worried about the density of your keywords, try to make it 2-5% for one-word keywords and 1-2% for longtail. If you are using WordPress, check out the Keyword Snatcher plugin.

Stay tuned for the next article in the series about how to receive links for better rankings.