http://www.bruntech.net.au

Most website owners talk about their most important keywords, but very few really do anything about them.

Those often overlooked search terms, that are so important to a website's placement in the search rankings, are a vital component of any search engine optimization (SEO) effort.

Without keywords for the search engines to index, there is literally nothing to find in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Keywords are the function of the search engines. As a result of those searches, the most important keywords are what lead potential customers to your web pages. Take care of your keywords, and they will take care of you.

The importance of keywords to a website is felt in two ways. The first area of consideration, when writing the on page and off page content is keyword placement on the page. Where the keywords are located is important, to varying degrees, with the major search engines.

The second area of importance for keywords is their density on the page. How many keywords appear on the page, makes a difference to the entire search engine algorithms. The choice of which keywords to target on a page is often of vital importance, especially for highly competitive keywords.

Each search engine, from industry dominant Google, to Yahoo, to MSN/Bing, to the various other search engines, has a different keyword calculation. Some search engines permit heavier keyword numbers and density on the page, while some like Google, have much stricter allowable density levels. The placement of keywords, in any number of locations on the page, has different results in the various search engines as well.

Consideration must also be given to such additional on page keyword modifications as bolding, italic, and actual keyword type size used. Other factors include the use of page titles, and their relative importance to the various search engines, as keyword delivery vehicles.

Consideration has to be given to the incoming link anchor text to a web page. Any linked off page content is, in fact, part of the receiving page's total content.

Taking into consideration, both the placement and density of a web page's keywords, will pay dividends for any website owner. Fortunately, keywords can be used in such a way as to propel a site higher in the search engine rankings.

While there are certainly no magic formulas, a few common sense ideas will pay off for most web pages.

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