Rehashing Relevance

One of the key things in search engine optimisation is relevance. Before I discuss relevance though let me give you the dictionary definition of the word it was derived from, relevant.

relevant (adj): closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand

Hence when talking about relevance in SEO terms what is taken into consideration is the just how relevant or closely connected the search terms entered by search engines users are to the actual contents of a web page and/or an entire website. Because of this fact SEO is definitely more than just making sure that your page has the lots of keywords and phrases but also making sure that the search engines can clearly see they are indeed highly relevant to the rest of the contents of the page.

Here are some tips to help emphasise the relevance of keywords within a page with respect to each other and the entire page’s content:

• Unless it is the homepage, make sure that each page has a theme or specific topic.
  
• Use a broad spectrum of keywords from the generic to the more specific and from the highly competitive to the more obscure ones.
  
• Jumble the words used within phrases to accommodate for different search patterns of users.
  
• The most important keywords should be used in the page title and the headings.
  
• Organise your paragraphs/sections so as to place relevant words nearer each other. The proximity of related terms will further increase the apparent relevance of the search term to the page’s contents.
  
• Remember that search engines are smart and getting smarter each day. Don’t try to fool them by placing hidden unrelated text (we all know what this is called!) in hopes of conning people to get to your irrelevant (to the search term) page. It will likely work but you can get caught!
  
• Don’t forget to put a keyword(s) on the anchor text of links and make sure that you only link to pages that have the same/similar topic.
  
• Don’t sweat over words with the same spelling but different meaning search engines can now (for the most part) determine what you really want to convey…especially if you did your job and followed the tips above.