| Good analysis and research is the main criteria | | | | of the competition. |
| when it comes to sorting out your keywords. | | | | * If sites ranked for particular keyword searches |
| Easier said than done though in the great majority | | | | are really competitors or have any relationship to |
| of cases. Engaging an expert is possibly one of | | | | the area in which you compete. |
| the best moves you'll make, as they'll run rings | | | | OK, now's the time to hit you with a big one - |
| around any amount of work you'll do on your | | | | Latent Semantic Indexing otherwise referred to |
| own. The difference between the best keyword | | | | as Latent Semantic Analysis. Gosh where did that |
| analysis software and the freebees can be | | | | one suddenly come from? Well it's possibly too |
| colossal. The best tools will unearth some real eye | | | | much to adequately detail in this brief article, but |
| openers you'll never have thought about. | | | | worth mentioning nevertheless. If you want to |
| One elementary yet very common mistake is to | | | | get serious about your keywords and SEO in |
| gather together a bunch of keywords and to | | | | general, then some additional research around LSI |
| copy them across an entire website. This will | | | | will do you the world of good. Wikipedia lists LSI |
| drastically reduce the effectiveness of pages. If | | | | as a "technique in natural language processing, in |
| instead you focus and carryout research upon 2 | | | | particular in vectorial semantics, of analysing |
| to 5 words per page the results are likely to be | | | | relationships between a set of documents and the |
| much better. | | | | terms they contain by producing a set of |
| It's worth remembering that keyword spellings | | | | concepts related to the documents and terms". |
| can obviously vary from country to country. If | | | | Well no one ever said it was simple, but basically |
| we consider some of the most outstanding | | | | from a search engine performance point of view |
| differences between English speaking nations such | | | | we are interested in the relationship, grouping, |
| as England, the US and Australia, a whole new | | | | positioning and variation of terms. Occasionally the |
| batch of keywords may be worth further | | | | right mix can just be stumbled across but most |
| analysis. Not only are spellings possibly different | | | | web designers wouldn't really be aware they'd got |
| but also entire words will have their alternatives | | | | it right or wrong. First understanding and then |
| (eg pavement and sidewalk). Complete phrases | | | | using this mix intelligently can set your pages |
| may also be regularly used and understood in one | | | | leagues ahead of the competition. |
| country but not in another. Particular phrases can | | | | As pointed out at the start it's perhaps best |
| even vary greatly on a much more local level, | | | | leaving the whole business of SEO and keywords |
| especially if we consider popular sayings and slang. | | | | to the experts. This is assuming you can find |
| That said one of the best policies you can adopt | | | | someone who's competent and has your best |
| is to check your keywords regularly. All things | | | | interests in mind. If your budget is only small or |
| web related tend to change fairly quickly. What | | | | you site performs so badly that anything is an |
| works today could be desperately out of line | | | | improvement, then the best advice is to keep it |
| tomorrow. Once you feel you have a good set of | | | | simple. Sorting out your keywords for a site that |
| keywords together, you'd be best advised to | | | | has previously coped reasonably well without will |
| carryout some basic search engine tests. Testing | | | | make a big difference. Don't expect overnight |
| will illustrate: | | | | success. The top search engines move at their |
| * If keywords are correct for the niche of the | | | | own pace, so it's not uncommon for site |
| page concerned. | | | | modifications to take several weeks to filter |
| * Competitiveness of keywords and the strength | | | | through to an improvement in search positioning. |