Keywords and articles

[YoFluffy]

If I write an article/ guest post / blog, how does Google know which words are key words? Of all the words in the piece there'd probably be less than 5% that are related to our business (family holiday related), how would these be recognised as keywords?

Also, if I entered the phrase (for example) " family adventure holidays in Majorca", would this help on the following terms or would it be seen only in its entirety? :
Adventure holidays
Family adventure
family holidays
holidays in Majorca... etc etc

Thanks!

[Belfast]

***I hope the following makes sense! - it's late here!***

Firstly it would 'help' for all terms... but not enough to make any valuable improvement in serps.

Here are a few possible examples - it's a bit like playing 'SEO Trump Cards'!

At a really wild guess, if you made that your <title> - you'd probably show on the first page if someone typed the whole phrase in exactly. (Because it appears as a whole in the most important part of the page - and nobody else has it as a whole - even though they have good links for other terms such as 'holidays in Majorca' (which could still keep you from ranking first - as one or two also mentioned the words 'family adventure' as a throw away comment - and links are more valuable than even the most important 'on-page' aspect)).

In really overly simple terms it would go something like this (all numbers made up!) :

1,000,000 sites include the words (in any order) 'holidays' 'in' 'Majorca' - you will automatically rank higher than a vast majority of the ones that don't use them in that exact order (but probably near the bottom of those that do - after an initial 'boost-for-new-content'). So straight away you will be #700,000 (after any boost) - which won't get you a high CTR!
Mention it again - you'll rank above all those that mention it once. (#400,000!)
Mention it at the beginning of your <title> and you'll rank above everyone who 'just' mentions it - no matter how many times they mentioned it. (#700)
Get a mediocre link - you'll rank above everyone who has none.(#180)
Get a few mediocre links - you'll rank above everyone who has one.(#60)
Get a couple of GOOD links with 'sort of relevant anchor text' - you'll rank above nearly everyone who just has mediocre links (#20)
Get a couple of GOOD links with 'very relevant anchor text' - you'll rank above nearly everyone who 'just' has GOOD links with 'sort of relevant anchor text' (#10)
Get a handul of GOOD links - you'll rank above everyone who only has a couple - (#1)

Then you get greedy and buy a handful of links with 'holidays in Majorca' - to try to 'secure your top spot' - jealous #2 submits a SPAM report to google and you get an unnatural links warning and end up at '#infinity'.

Of course there are other factors, but, in short, that is the kind of way to think.

[YoFluffy]

Get a couple of GOOD links with 'sort of relevant anchor text' - you'll rank above nearly everyone who just has mediocre links (#20)
Get a couple of GOOD links with 'very relevant anchor text' - you'll rank above nearly everyone who 'just' has GOOD links with 'sort of relevant anchor text' (#10)
Get a handul of GOOD links - you'll rank above everyone who only has a couple - (#1)
.

Darren has already looked at our site and recommended the last of the list above - our main competitor doesn't have many links, but those they have are on good authority sites and very relevant.

So...(just to make sure I'm understanding this properly!)...if we get the chance of a very good link on a very good site, it would be better to use the full anchor text "Family Adventure Holidays in Majorca" as this would tick a few boxes? Or would it be better to specialise further and perhaps just go for "Family Adventure Holidays" if that was our more volume key word?

Sorry if I'm being a little dense on this one


(p.s. These aren't our keywords but just to illustrate my question).

[Belfast]

So...(just to make sure I'm understanding this properly!)...if we get the chance of a very good link on a very good site, it would be better to use the full anchor text "Family Adventure Holidays in Majorca" as this would tick a few boxes? Or would it be better to specialise further and perhaps just go for "Family Adventure Holidays" if that was our more volume key word?

Some thoughts...

1. Any good link will help towards any keyword to some extent - no matter what the anchor text.
2. A short tail keyword ("Family Adventure Holidays") will help that specific keyword the most - but will also help the longer tail keyword as it contains those words - and more so than 'any anchor text' (as in No.1 above)
3. A long tail keyword ("Family Adventure Holidays in Majorca") will help that specific keyword the most - but will also help the shorter tail keyword - as it contains those words - and more so than 'any link' (as in No.1 above)

So...

If it is 'just' one link for now, start looking for what is going to bring you some money - I'd use both your analytics and your Google SERPS to decide:

If you have lots of keywords bringing traffic (that converts) to your site that use the words "Adventure Holidays" in them -and ARE NOT ranking in the top 2 or 3 results - I'd probably use that keyword (Adventure Holidays) as that will push all the terms slightly up and increase your converting traffic.

If you had one specific keyword (short or long tail) that seems to be driving some significant 'converting' traffic to your site (and not ranking in the top few) - I'd seriously consider using THAT as my anchor text.

There are loads of other options, but you get the idea...

[DarrenHaye]

So...(just to make sure I'm understanding this properly!)...if we get the chance of a very good link on a very good site, it would be better to use the full anchor text "Family Adventure Holidays in Majorca" as this would tick a few boxes? Or would it be better to specialise further and perhaps just go for "Family Adventure Holidays" if that was our more volume key word?.

The sort of links you should be looking to achieve will be given to you, therefor you wont be choosing the anchor text, it will more than likely be "domain.com" and there's nothing wrong with that at all, where the link is coming matters a massive amount more than the anchor text.

[Belfast]

The sort of links you should be looking to achieve will be given to you, therefor you wont be choosing the anchor text, it will more than likely be "domain.com" and there's nothing wrong with that at all, where the link is coming matters a massive amount more than the anchor text.

While I definitely agree ('domain.com' from BBC.co.uk trumps 'family adventure holidays' from an article site) get the benefit of a 'quality site' down an 'anchor text' link and it is the recipe for a really excellent bunch of SERPs.

Yes, the links will ideally come naturally, and, to be fair will only matter from an anchor text point of view if you you have friends in high places, request that an AT be changed, buy links (not recommending it) or indeed you could use the analytics example from a couple of posts above to funnel good links coming into different pages on your own site to the 'money pages'.

***edit***

Don't be distracted by the finer details - PRIORITISE WITH GOOD LINKS/GOOD PLACES.

[Nicholasamarq]

There are many different types of keyword and key phrase groups including: Conclusion, Extension, Contrast, Focus, Proof, Representation and Series. Each classification provides its own function, as do the search phrases inside of a given classification.

[ryankidman]

yes ofcource it will help

[guptaabhijit318]

Articles optimized properly for keywords stand a much better chance of being found and attracting a high readership. Quality articles that are optimized correctly for keywords can carry on to attract readers for years to come with nominal promotion.

[eGrove Systems]

There are some options to know the keyword, you can bold the keyword separately or there will be a column name tag to specify the keywords.

[joseph02]

Highlight your word which you want to show Google as your keyword by Using html tag like<strong><B> for your word and give hyperlink to that word.