When search engines crawl the web looking for web pages to index, one of the things they scan is the location and frequency of keywords.  Keywords are the words and phrases entered into the search box when someone is looking for something on the web.

In optimizing your web pages for the internet, it’s important that you be aware of what keywords your prospects are search for.  These words and phrases need to be on your web pages in order for you to be found.

•    Title

One of the places you should use keywords is in the title of your web page.  The title is the first thing a web crawler will see about the page.  If your keyword is in the title, the search engine immediately knows what your page is about.

This applies to every page on your website, not just the home page.  Each web page has a title, and each page should be focused on one specific keyword.  You can have more than one page focused on a keyword, but you shouldn’t have more than one keyword as the focus of a page.

•    Subheadings

Your keywords should also be used in subheadings throughout your web page.  These subheadings are called h1, h2, h3 (etc) tags.  With these tags, you can label different sections of your content to make it easier for the reader to absorb.  It also helps the search engine crawlers relate keywords to your page.

•    Content

Additionally, you need to use your keywords in your content.  There is a metric called keyword density, which is the percentage of your content item that consists of your keyword.  Keyword density is calculated as the number of keyword occurrences divided  by the total number of words.

As an example, if you have an article that’s 500 words long, and you use your keyword 10 times, your keyword density would be 2%.  There is a lot of debate on the best keyword density, but somewhere between 3% and 5% is about average.

If your keyword density is too high, your web page might be penalized.  The search engine crawlers are automated tools, not humans sitting and reading every web page.  Keywords that are used too frequently will make your web page seem to be artificially inflated to the software.  Write for your reader, not the search engines.  Your natural language will get you the best results.

•    External Links

There’s another area you should place your keywords, but it’s not on your web page.  It’s very helpful to the search engines to understand your site’s importance if another site links to your site.  This is called an inbound link.

When the inbound link is in the form of your main keyword, that’s even more valuable.  It lets the search engine crawler know that, not only is your site important, but it’s important for this specific area.

How do you set that up?  When you have the opportunity for another site to link to one of your web pages, ensure the link text is not just your url.  The destination of the link should be the url of the page optimized for that keyword, but the link text should be the keyword itself.

Keywords are critical to your success with search engine optimization, but they’re also critical to your clients and prospects.  If you have something that will genuinely help them, it’s your responsibility to make sure they can find it and you.