One of our first conversations with any new client is to clear up some common misconceptions regarding Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and keywords.

When Google ranks your site, it looks for a specific list of items to know whether to list your site on page 1 for your search criteria or page not number 1 for the same search criteria.

Many years ago Google paid attention to KEYWORDS meta data in your site code to help determine where your site would appear in search results.

People would stuff their meta data code area with anything and everything that maybe could be about their site. This was repeated on every single page of their site. An example is below for a potential sports store.

< meta name="Keywords" content="football, soccer, baskbetball, sports balls, cricket balls, tennis balls, bowling balls, round balls, orange balls, black balls, balls for sport, sporting balls, sporting teams, school sport, club sport">

This hangover from quite some time ago, still lives with clients and is a misconception we are on a mission to clear up!

Google no longer looks for KEYWORDS in the metadata area (the CODE) to determine your page rank or to be more correct your relevancy for the search criteria you have entered.

Don't believe me?

I thought you might need some convincing, why not listen from the experts themselves..

So are KEYWORDS dead? No!

Keywords are still important but in the following important context.

• Your should have them in your page title tag
• You should have them in your page name
• You should wrap them in H1 tags
• They need to be specific to the actual page your are looking at - i.e. - you may have only one or 2 key phrases
• You should refer to them in within the page content in an appropriate manner - i.e. you can and should repeat them, but it needs to make sense to you when you read it out loud

Want to know more?

Why not review some of our other blog posts on this topic, look out of our next SEO basics training or get in contact with us so that the we can show you how you can control this with your own Adobe Business Catalyst CMS.

About the Author - Leanne O'Sullivan
	Leanne has been sharing her knowledge and the power of the web, social media and search optimisation with Bosweb clients for well over a decade. An accomplished public speaker, Leanne enjoys empowering people with the skills and knowledge to make their business an online success!