Keyword relevancy

Search engine optimization starts with finding the right keywords but you must consider keyword relevancy so that the content on your website and the keywords you chose to focus on are in sync.

At the dawn of the Internet, search engines ranked websites predominantly by the keywords they set in their meta tags. This practice was soon abused by using irrelevant but popular keywords to attract massive traffic (e.g. Britney Spears on a sports equipment website). The rise of false results in search engines posed a growing threat and they realized that they needed to focus on keyword relevancy as well. Search engines had to find ways to refine the results in order to provide their users with more relevant results.

In order to do so, they started to examine the relevance of the content of the webpage and the keywords. The consequence was more relevant results.

How to write good content from a keyword relevancy point of view?

The ultimate goal of search engine optimization is to create a website that is easy to use and offers real, valuable content for your visitors. Search engines create incentives in their ranking algorithms for websites creators with:

• Content – the best approach is to focus on writing good and worthwhile content and include only appropriate keywords
• Article length – length of the article should be around 300+ words because search engines focus on the first 250-300 words of the content of the page
• Keyword density – the optimal ratio of keyword density to influence keyword relevance is widely debated, it lies somewhere between 2-10%. Overuse of keywords can backfire however, search engines may penalize suspect behavior, but common sense should protect you from making such a mistake
• Off site content – linking or embedding external content, like a video for example, that is relevant to the topic can further strengthen keyword relevancy