In part one of this article I explained why keyword research is so critical to search engine optimisation. Now let's break down some of the common keyword 'issues' one by one.

1. Commas

The trouble with using commas to separate keywords or phrases is that you limit yourself to being found only by these phrases. If they haven't been researched properly then they are quite useless. Removing all commas from the tag opens up phrases that may not have been thought of and allows the keyword tag to be shortened. For example, the phrases may be 'UK PR agency', 'PR agency', 'public relations in London', 'UK public relations' and 'PR agency UK' - a total of fifteen words if commas were used. All these can be squeezed together to read 'UK PR agency UK public relations in London' - a total of eight words without commas but all the phrases are still there. This then allows you space for more phrases, but at the same time keeping your tag to a reasonable length. (Some search engines will only read a certain number of characters in a meta tag).

2. What Case? Misspellings?

With the shorter keyword tag you can add variations of your existing words e.g. 'UK PR agency UK public relations in London uk pr agency uk public relations in london'. Variations can include capitalisation, mis-spellings, grammatical errors, etc. I would only concentrate on common mis-spellings and proper name capitalisation e.g. London and london. There is absolutely no point duplicating everything you do in capitals and in lower case, and then mis-spelling it all! First of all your tags will become too long and most of the words in there will not be read. Secondly, keyphrases in your tags should also be in the text on your page. So unless you like your text with lots of mis-spellings and capitalisation there's no point. Finally, if a searcher mistypes a word they will probably not find anything of any use so they will search again, spelling the words correctly. I find the whole 'secret tips' of mis-spelling and capitalisation a big myth personally.

3. Geography

If you target the UK then try putting 'UK' in front of a few keyphrases (or, perhaps 'England', 'English' or 'British'). This is particularly important if you only sell to UK customers. You don't want to be competing against the US sites if you don't sell/ship across 'the pond'. If you have a regional business, state what region you're in. Remember to use the appropriate spelling as well. We use 'search engine optimisation' because we are targeting UK customers and don't want to compete on the search engines against US sites using 'search engine optimization'. Also, remember that each country has its own search engines, eg MSN.co.uk, freeserve.com, UKMax, etc.

4. Single Keywords

Basically, don't even bother. Keywords are so common that the competition is massive. The sites ranking well for keywords like 'business', 'computers', 'sex', 'britney', etc are putting in an awful lot of time and money to get up there. Apart from this, how would you search for Britney's latest tour dates? You wouldn't search for 'britney' would you? Internet users are becoming a lot wiser in their searches and know that a search for a particular keyword, especially a common one, will bring back a lot of crap. Users are targeting their searches by using phrases such as 'britney spears tour dates', etc. Ranking well for keywords may increase your site's traffic, but it won't necessarily mean your sales will increase as this traffic is not targeted.

5. Your URL

Include your URL in your keyword tag. I put the URL at the end of every keyword tag I use. This is a handy little tip as a lot of internet users do not use the browser's address bar, probably because they don't know how.

For example, on GoTo UK 21,772 people searched for 'yahoo.co.uk' in the search box in March 2001! This is especially important to businesses/sites that have the same web address as their company name. If someone wanted to view the DVisions site but didn't know the address then they might go to a search engine and do a search for 'www.dvisions.co.uk' and hopefully they'd find us.

Ranking well for your URL is not only helpful for visitors but should also be easy to achieve!