SEO Keywords Introduction

In today's business, the Internet is an essential part of many businesses. Super giants like Google, Yahoo! and MSN makes the wealth of information available to virtually anyone. The Internet is one of the most influential mediums of information including slander which can spread at alarming rates across the globe like never before. Commercialization of the Internet however, has its rewards and its dark side. Particularly in the field of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the task of building website content and using techniques in such a way to increase the popularity and search result ranking when someone types in a search query at Google and Yahoo!. The corrupt and manipulative techniques of SEO is a leading cause of decreasing social value of the Internet.

SEO and its Background on the Internet

When the Internet was first born it was not realized as the "Internet". It was rather a network of command line Unix machines for military and research purposes. As time progressed the Internet became an entity as we perceive it today; a wealth of information, freedom of speech, a business tool and a way to get your word to the ends of the Earth. Commercialization of the Internet has lead to many positive benefits as well as many negative issues.

The highly competitive nature of the Internet created a new breed of entrepreneurs. Young business people could literally make millions overnight by playing stocks, online gambling, offering a service or simply scamming the next "dumb Joe". Many unique commercial services were born such as Amazon.com, and Ebay.com. At the same time, people required a method to pay people outside their country of residence easily and effortlessly. Services like PayPal, Western Union evolved to better serve the populace.

With the mass of information overflowing on the Internet, search engines provide a way to filter the information to precisely what a person wants. The formatting and manipulation of search engine results to make a particular website hit the number one spot is the specialty of SEO businesses.

SEO Keywords Informative Guide

In the world of SEO, keywords are one of the most important factors. Keywords are general phrases, synonyms and even misspelled words that describe a web page. These keywords are generally what the SEO expert thinks the user will put into the big search bar on the search engine page. Extensive research on keywords are done weeks prior to producing websites and online markets as everything will be based around these keywords.

The keywords themselves appear in the document body text of the html, php, and other web page publishing languages. Search engine algorithms are changed monthly to optimize searches to better suit their users. For example, if one were to search for DVD players but instead got VHS players, the search engine results pages (SERPs) would be completely irrelevant. Unique and interesting keywords seem to be the most effective for search engines like Google (Hemanth Dondolu,interview).

Google page relevancy is measured by the frequency in which the page is updated, and the number of backlinks(links to the web page) to that page with an alt description that describes that page(Google.com). For example, if there were a million links to the Whitehouse in the form George Bush is Dumb Google would conclude that George Bush is Dumb (Wall,pg.91). In other words, if someone were to enter "George Bush" into the search engine text, a lot of sites who thinks George Bush is dumb will appear at the top of the search results.

The technique of making millions of backlinks to "describe" a website can be a positive thing or a negative thing. If a person was to create a web application that was widely popular and available, there would naturally be a lot of links with positive keywords about that site, thus increasing its popularity. However, to a competitor this could mean a loss in traffic. In some instances competitors can create a vast network of sites that flood the site with negative links and slander. This however, is generally counter productive and if the product is good then good links would build at a faster rate. Each link to the site is always a positive thing even if the description is bad.

Many search engines such as Yahoo.com weigh keywords more heavily than companies like Google. In particular, the http standard specifies an optional meta tag that describes what the page is about(Fielding,RFC 2616). A good SEO practice would put more generic phrases in their meta keyword tag and even misspellings. Once upon a time search engines heavily relied on the meta keyword tags but that has evolved and changed as computers became faster. (Fishkin,pg 15). Search engines now analyze whole pages and the documents of the text to measure keyword density. Keyword density is measured by how far apart, how many keywords and the positioning of the keywords on a web page.

Ultimately, what the webmasters think people will type into search engines that matter. Several tools such as Overture, and Google adwords keytools help provide statistics on the number of keywords searched in a broader spectrum. Google in particular provides statistics on the search volume as well as competitor volume on key phrases. For example if "computers" were entered into the keywords tool, search terms such as "Cheap computer parts", "free computer", "dell computer" would appear depending on search volume. The broad search phrases people use are generally highly competitive making new entrepreneurs finding it difficult to reach that market unless they have a niche.