Choosing the right keyword is the first and the most critical step of any SEO Campaign. Image courtesy yieldsoftware.com

1. In <title> tag – Search results always shows the title tag as your page title. The Title must be short and precise, say 6-12 words. The Keyword can be anywhere in the tag but preferably near the beginning.
2. In anchor text – Anchor text with keyword focus from external links is an important factor. Inbound links are considered positive not only for the site but for the keyword as well.
3. In headings – The Keywords placed on the heading in H1 is an important factor but the page should have actual text relevant to the keyword. Try to keep the heading precise (7-10 words). 
4. It is good to have the keyword as the first word of the heading.
5. In Domain Name – Domain names incorporating vital keywords is a very important factor.
6. In URL – Helps a lot to rank well but keyword should be in the other parts of the document. It should not be over optimized else you might be penalized.
7. Density – It is a measure to check the relevance of the web content. Keep less than 10% keyword density. Upto 7-8% for targeted 2-3 keywords and 1-2% for minor or secondary keywords on a page.
8. In the beginning of the document – It is a good practice to have the keyword in first 25-50 words of the document. Be it a table or a paragraph, try to keep it in the beginning of the document.
9. In Alt Tags – Label images on your page with <alt>/<title> tag filled with some keywords as spiders do read these tags.
10. In other Headlines – It is a good practice to have the keywords in other headlines (h2 – h6).
11. In Meta Tags – Yahoo and Bing still rely on them, Google does not. Having these tags properly filled will not harm, so just do it.
12. Proximity – It is the closeness between the 2 or more keywords. The closer the keywords the more likely it is to rank higher.
13. It is best to have the keywords one after the other i.e. with no words in between them.
    Eg : “discount perfume” is better than “discount on perfume”.
14. In Image names – Eg : Perfume.jpg – Good to have keywords in images names.
15. Secondary Keywords – Targeting and optimizing secondary keywords can be beneficial as they might have a lot less competition than the most popular keywords. Eg: discount Calvin Klien perfumes will have a lot less hits and a better targeted traffic.
16. Synonyms – Using synonyms on web pages is good as Search Engines have algorithms to take in to consideration synonyms for Keyword match and ranking especially for sites in English but it is not taken into account for many other languages. For instance, in the perfume site, “fragrance” is a synonym, Include synonyms on the page but do not rush to optimize every synonym.

Bing - Could it become the king? (Image Courtesy: geniusreviews.org)

Another interesting news was the increase in the number of keywords used in the search queries. People are using up to 5 – 8 words in their searches.  You can read more about the actual statistics at the report here.

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