Why do we use keywords?  Because we want people to find our website when they use search engines. And how do search engines rank our web pages based on the keywords we use? Oh, if only there were a quick and simple answer...

I just replied to a client about what key words we might choose for her new website. Her site promotes her services as a personal chef and some of the keywords she requested included 'diabetes', 'macrobiotic cooking', 'heart health' and 'high blood pressure'.

Now, before reading further, I invite you to test your own judgement and see if you come up with the same solution as I did.

 The website is about a personal chef. The pages will include topics like 

• What is a personal chef / what duties do they perform?
• Meals and how they are prepared
• Credentials about this particular chef
• FAQ about personal chefs
• Contact page
• Blog with recipies, tips & tricks, etc.

Some of the keywords requested by the client include

• Diabetes
• macrobiotic cooking
• heart health
• high blood pressure

Which, if any of those keywords would you pick?


I responded that we could create a page about macrobiotic cooking if that was actually an area of expertise, but I nixed the other three. Using 'diabetes' as an example, I'll explain why.

    Generally speaking, search engines think like this: 
    When a person does a search on a keyword, go fine any pages using that keyword (sometimes there are thousands) and order them by relevancy - with the most relevant page at the top. In other words, for a page to show up at the top of a search for 'Diabetes' (of which there are over 71,000 results on Google) it must meet these criteria better than the others: 

1. The page or section topic must be about diabetes.
2. The word 'diabetes' must be used in the text several times. (it can also be used in links, text behind pictures, meta tags, etc.)
3. Any links on the page to other pages/sites about diabetes will help.
4. Preferably it will have multiple outside links (links from other reputable websites - preferably also related to 'diabetes') pointing to it.

    These are some of the generally acceptable means of using a keyword onyour website and are referred to as 'white hat' techniques (incidentally, the terms "white hat" and "black hat" refer to the old black and white cowboy movies where the good guy wore a white had and the bad guy(s) wore black.)  If you meet the criteria, then your page will be ranked by how well you compare to the other 71,000 pages using the word 'diabetes'. 

    Since many medical and health related sites will almost certainly be more relevant to the keyword 'diabetes' than a website promoting a personal chef, I judged that it would not make sense to use 'diabetes' as a keyword for my client's site. At best, it would come up in the search engines on page 14 or 25 (or 200) and nobody would ever see it.

And that's only if you follow the white hat techniques. You can actually do everything right and still get lousy search engine rankings, depending on the keyword(s) you choose and how well your competitors use the same keyword(s).

    Additionally there are "black hat" techniques which some sites employ to boost their ranking on search engines (remember: 'black hat' = bad guy... BOO!... Hisssssssss...) Using any of these techniques can actually harm your page's ranking:

1. The word 'diabetes' is thrown in multiple times even though the page is obviously not about diabetes.
2. The word is STUFFED into the page (used multiple times in such a way that does not make sense or does not read well.) - Keyword stuffing will get your site banned from some search engines, including Google. 
3. The word is purposely hidden around the page so that the reader won't even see it. This will also get your site banned.

You can read more about black hat techniques here: http://blog.cincinnatiwebs.com/2010/02/11/seo-placement-firms--beware-geeks-bearing-gifts.aspx