How Keywords Impact Your Site Ranking
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was once critical to effectively growing one's presence on the internet, and while it is no longer the be all and end all thanks to the domination of social media, correct keyword choice still makes huge difference for artists and musicians when it comes to Google's algorithm and guiding traffic to their sites.
________________________________
Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
Search Engine Optimization or SEO isn’t as big as it once was in terms of one’s Internet presence, but it’s still important. Today social media has taken the spotlight off SEO, and some artists and musicians no longer even have a website (a big mistake in their strategy). That said, you still want your website pages to rank high on any search. The problem is that it’s more difficult than ever because Google’s algorithm is smart and getting smarter all the time, especially when it comes to keywords.
One of the ways that a website search ranking could be helped is its strategic use of keywords, but even that has evolved over the years. A long time ago (at least in Internet years), having as many keywords as possible in your page text helped improve your ranking, which became known as “keyword stuffing,” but that’s now penalized by most search engines and especially Google.
Obviously keyword stuffing makes for text that’s difficult to read and doesn’t make much sense, and Google puts the user experience above all else these days, so readability is king. Until recently the ideal number of keywords was between 2 and 3% of the total word count, which meant that the keyword wasn’t used too often in well-crafted text.
Google’s algorithm gets a lot smarter as it goes along though, and it’s built around a formula that even few inside the company know. The latest change is that Google likes to not only see keywords (like “dog” on the example on the right), but also synonyms (hound, canine), related phrases (dog house, dog bone), and even other words forms like plurals, singulars, comparatives and past-tensed of the same word (dogs).
TIP: Keyword means more than just a single word (like SEO). A phrase separated by a comma (search engine optimization, Google analytics,) is also considered a keyword.
Adding text to a website is usually the last thing that anyone wants to think about, but it’s strategically important to how your page (not only your site) will rank in a search. Consider your keywords carefully.
You can read more from the Social Media Promotion For Musicians book and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.
