Website Health Check: Keyword Blunders - Part 1

Website Health Check provides a report on the components of a website. Keyword is one of the most important components. Let's start with it. Keywords are the starting point of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So, when you make a mistake with the keywords, your whole optimization process becomes a waste of time. So spend some time to do some keyword research. Here are some of the prominent blunders done in on-page optimization processes.

Blunder 1: Failing to do Keyword Research
People without Search Engine Optimization knowledge tend to do this mistake. Keyword research is the first lesson for a beginner in SEO. Keyword research, as the name suggests, is a research on probable words and helps you to weed out ones that wouldn't suit you in terms of high competition or low search volume (two factors to consider if you want a good position in the search results). If you have keywords without doing keyword research, it is possible that the words may not be useful in terms of SEO.

Blunder 2: Not Knowing if the Website has Keywords
The second blunder commonly found in many websites is that they do not add their keywords in the website. To find if a webpage in your website has any keywords, you can view the page source. To view the source, click on "View" button in the Menu bar and in the menu that pops up, click on "Page Source". In the new window, try to find the word "keywords" in the Meta tag. If you find it followed by a list of other words concerned with your website, then you have keywords in your website. If not, you should think about adding them. If your website does not have the keywords then it will not be properly listed by the search engines.

Blunder 3: Low Number of Keywords
OK, you have the keywords in the website. Is that it? The third most common blunder found is that the websites sometimes have low number of keywords for it to make any impact. For example, if you have a website based on shoes and you have a single keyword mentioned (shoes), then you will find thousands of competitors and millions of web pages that aim to get listed by search engines for the same keyword. The competition is simply too high. Hence, you have to have a minimum of four keywords that describe the website and its contents. So that even if you lose to your competition on one of the keywords, the other keywords might help you get a good position in the search pages. Do a keyword research and get more keywords.

Blunder 4: Too many keywords
If the search engines are fed many keywords, then the website will be listed under too many keywords and the focus will be thinned out. Hence, to focus your keyword research and related optimization processes, you'll have to have a maximum of 20. These will be taken by the search engines and the website indexed accordingly.

There are many sites that provide tools for finding these blunders in a website. Some sites even provide you with a whole Website Health Check where these and many other on-page elements are evaluated and suggestions are given.

If, in the Website Health Check, you come across any mistakes that you want to rectify, you can ask your website administrator to do the task. If you want a Search Engine Optimization approach to these criteria, get the assistance of an SEO company as they are more experienced in the optimization process.