Understanding Effective Use of Keywords and Key Phrases
Published April 15, 2010 | 
Most of us understand that for the most effective search engine optimization, you must use your keywords and keywords phrases effectively, but not everyone knows that for optimal effectiveness, you need to use different keywords and/or keyword phrases on each page of your website, and optimize each page for those keywords and/or keyword phrases that are most relevant to the content of that particular page.
Title Tags
- For the title tag, use keywords and/or keyword phrases as a descriptive title for each page.
- Use your most relevant keywords and/or keyword phrases in your home page title.
- To be the most effective, title tags should contain only keywords and/or keyword phrases.
Repeat the keywords and/or keyword phrases 2-3 times, but you have to make sure that the title makes sense, as an example for this page would be: Understanding Keyword Usage, Using Keywords and Keyword Phrases Effectively.
Meta Tag Keywords
- Place all relevant keywords and keyword phrases in your Meta tag….
- If possible, avoid using single keywords as they may be too competitive. Use keyword phrases instead.
- Don’t repeat your keywords more than 2-3 times to avoid offending some search engines.
- Separate keywords and keyword phrases with commas or spaces, not both, for example: keyword,keyword phrase,keyword or keyword keyword phrase keyword.
- Use common misspellings or miss-keyings. Ex: keywrod or keywird.
- Use different forms of keywords whenever possible. Ex: web site and website.
- Use singular and plural versions of keywords. Ex: website and websites.
- Use upper and lower case. Ex: Website and website
Meta Tag description
- Use your keywords and keyword phrases in your Meta tag description…..
- Repeat your most important keywords and/or keyword phrases a minimum of 2-3 times.
- The total length of your description tag should be no more than 20-25 words.
- Your description should make sense as this is what often shows up in the search engine results page, and this is your opportunity to persuade users to click through to your site so be sure your description is enticing and contains keywords and/or keyword phrases that will attract visitors.
Content
- Many search engines concentrate on the first 250 words of your text when looking for keyword relevancy and density so concentrate your keywords and/or keyword phrases there.
- Strive for 5-7% keyword density (5-7 keywords and/or keyword phrases per 100 words of text), and if your keyword density is much higher than this, your copy may not make sense AND the search engines may consider it keyword spamming.
- Use your most important keywords and/or keyword phrases throughout your copy but without sounding repetitious.
- Use your most important keywords and/or keyword phrases in your H1 tag, and to give more weight to your H1 tag, use only one H1 tag in your copy. (Your H1 tag should contain your most important statement so you shouldn’t need to use more than one H1 tag.)
- Use keywords and/or keyword phrases in your image ALT tags. For example your logo ALT tag should say something such as: ALT=”keyword logo image”.
META tags are not as important as they once were as most search engines are now searching your copy when looking for keywords and/or keyword phrases, therefore, it has become increasingly important to have the first 250 words of your copy be keyword rich.
Sometimes, it may be better to write your content first, then choose your keywords and/or keyword phrases from the content, and rewrite your content as needed, adding keywords and/or keyword phrases that pertain to the theme of the content, so in this way, you’ve chosen keywords and/or keyword phrases that are relevant to your content, instead of trying to write content to fit your keywords and/or keyword phrases.
Understand Keywords
Published March 22, 2010 | If you have already built a website, you probably know the importance of your keywords, and even if you are in the process of building your first site, you have probably heard a lot about them, and if you haven’t, you will, since keywords can make or break your website.
At the heart of the matter, you might find that in fact, you may build everything around your keywords with the understanding that they will lead you where you want to go, but if you choose the wrong keywords, rather than rising to the top of search engine rankings, your site will be left in the search engine dust.
Since you are reminded and realize it is a critical time to choose wisely, you can take a step back and put on your most creative cap, and should be able to come up with both unusual and profitable keywords. The idea here is to come up with words that will sum up the purpose of your page, while being unique enough that other webmasters aren’t using them in the same combination of the keywords that you choose, and with keeping that in mind, move to the more important idea and come up with groups of keywords, or phrases if you will, rather than single solitary words, with the reason being single words prove to be much more competitive and therefore much more expensive.
To give you some peace of mind, know there are tools out there that will help you with the process of choosing your keywords, and these tools can tell you what words are popular and which words and phrases people are actually searching for. 
Even better yet, these tools can also suggest alternatives, by researching what keywords or phrases are searched for, and these tools can many times also suggest alternatives for your consideration. By you researching what keywords or phrases are searched for, and how many results these keywords produce, you can greatly help influence not only the success, but increase the level of success of your Web marketing plan.
I would strongly suggest putting some significant time and effort into choosing these keywords, and in keeping with the axiom “you can do it now, or do it later,” a lack of time here can, and will result in a tremendous amount of work later on. Many a webmaster and webmistress have unsuccessfully tried to rearrange the wording on their site to work around their keywords, when in reality they have it reversed, and when this happens, you end up with wording that is very fragmented and definitely unattractive. 
Remember, if you choose your keywords wisely and let them be your strong foundation, you can then build from the ground up, and not worry about doing demolition work later.
Take your time and use the tools available to you to build a successful website, a site which will bring in traffic, attract backlinks (inbound links), and most importantly, that the search engines will love to visit many times every day. You can, ultimately, produce a relevant site that will work well, and can consequently generate a tremendous amount of traffic, so be good to your website and your website will be good to you.
It is a learning experience that will only make you stronger, wiser and more successful!