Search engines work like a democracy. Each link to your website is a vote in popularity. Another great way to get links to your website is to give people the option of LIKEing your pages and/or blog posts to their favourite social media site like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+. Also like a democracy, louder voices carry more weight. In the case of search engines, louder keywords are especially valued:

  • In the title of the page (which  should also be your Heading 1) -- Note that you should never have more than one Heading 1 in your content.
  • In Heading 2 through 3.
  • In Links on your pages
  • In links pointing to your website from other high ranking websites
  • In words appearing closer to the top of your web pages
  • In pages closest to your home page.

The deeper your pages are buried in your website, the less valuable Google will perceive them to be.

Because of past abuse by people marketing on the Internet, Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions no longer carry as much weight as they once did with search engines. Today, keywords work much better if they appear in the page. Although you can certainly use Meta Keywords, it is only recommended if you do a really good job at it. Otherwise it can actually hurt your rankings in search engine results.

The best way to drive traffic to your website though is actually by posting articles regularly on high ranking websites and to comment in other peoples blogs. Again, links containing keywords are especially valuable to search engines. Be sure to always include link back to your website in your signature block when posting articles.