Search engines have figured out that if they promote your site, and a visitor clicks, and they don’t see the words for which they just searched anywhere on the page then they will get frustrated and try other sites (or even other search engines if it happens enough). So, they won’t promote your site if you don’t actually talk about the right things where human eyes would find them – and not just in the keyword “META”, which is what you’re editing when you fill out the “keywords” box in our page editor.

 

In fact, Google in particular has stopped looking at this part of your page for keywords (they say so themselves right here), and even the other search engines will only use this box for emphasis. If the words weren’t visually on the page then it doesn’t matter if they’re inside it hidden somewhere – you just won’t rank well. So make a list of words and phrases for which you know you want to rank. Find a way to work those into the page’s contents where they will be read by people, not just search engines.

 

Come back next week to check out how making your key words and phrases into a headline, a bulleted list, or a hyperlink helps get them noticed.