There is no denying the importance of keywords used in any content that is placed on the Web. Keywords allow you and everyone else who uses the Web the ability to find what you are looking for. If you need just one bit of information, you likely would spend countless hours in research trying to find it if it was not for keywords.

As an Internet marketing professional, how do keywords relate to your own business? Usually, if you are using the Web as a marketing tool in any way, keywords are an important component.

In this article serie, we will examine the importance of keywords. We also compare it to the importance of quality content. Is it possible to have great content and still have great keywords in your final copy? It is possible, and in fact, it is necessary to do this if you wish to have a successful website or blog.

Before getting into these details, let’s start at the beginning. What are keywords? They are words people type into a search box when they are looking for something online. For example, let say you are looking to purchase a table. You get online, go to the search box, and type in the word “table” into the search box. The search engines start looking for websites that relate to that keyword. Within seconds, there is a long list or results in front of you which is called a search engine results page from which you can choose from.

Now, on the flip side of the coin, if you owned a website selling tables, you would want to attract this person to your website. To do so, you need to have your website displayed on the search engine results page. To do this, you need to have the most appropriate keywords on your website. So, for example, you need to have the word “table” used properly on your website for the search engine results to actually see your website as valuable to this search.

Using keywords will help you prove your value to the search engines. The key is to know what helps you to rank well and what may not help you. Less than a decade ago, people took advantage of the keywords. Pages and pages of websites had virtually nothing but keywords on them. The problem is, when a website is packed with just keywords, it is likely not to be packed with information!

Here is an other example: Jim designs a website to attract visitors who he hopes will visit the affiliate pages he is linking to. So, he plans to put lots of keywords on his page. That way, his website will rank well, right?

There are two problems with this process. First, there is little chance that anyone who comes to such a page will feel it valuable enough to stick around and click onto affiliate links.

Second, Google and other search engines have made significant changes to their complex algorithms. Websites that have too many keywords on them will be ranked lower in the search engine results pages.

The key is to know what the actual best percentage is. Of course, Google is not going to tell you just how many keywords to use. They do offer a lot of in-depth information that you can use, though. It is this information that you want to rely on to get the results you are looking for. Google is not “always” the bad guy: At the end, they just want to provide search engine users with the best results that will help solve their problem.

In the next articles, we will go over some of the best strategies for getting the right keywords in the best possible ratio into your sites and articles for the best overall performance.