Keywords... Everyone knows what they are and what they are used for. In the most basic form your keywords are food for the search engines. One of the things you should consider in developing your website is how to approach your keywords. Additionally keep in mind that you can change your keywords at any time.

 What is the best way to come up with keywords? Think of what people using search engines would be entering and try to build off of that. Another good way is to visit your competition and see what keywords they are having success with. A third way is to search the major engines for the keywords you want to rate high in and see what keywords they are using.

 Keywords are only one small part of Search Engine Optimization...

Done correctly they can be very powerful. You will not be able to tell what works the best until you try it. I am going to try something with my site's keywords to see what effect I can achieve in the SE's.

 Here is what I have done...

I think that the order of your keywords is very important. The keywords that are most important to your site should be listed first. Of course I will only be able to prove it if my testing works correctly.

 Recently I found my site on the first page of Google for the terms "web developer for hire". I use that phrase in my title and description; however, I realize that this phrase was not actually in my keyword list at first. My site is listed in position 6 as of 08/2007 with the following first 6 keywords:

 web, website, developer, webmaster, programmer, dahlonega, georgia

 I have changed my keyword list to the following:

web developer for hire, web, developer, for hire, web development, webmaster

I am hoping to improve my position a little on the SE's with a change in the order or importance of the meta keywords. I will update this article with results in the coming months as I find out what the results are.

If you are interested in optimizing your keywords or other meta tags please click on 'Contact Me' and I would be happy to help. I can review your current keywords, search engine position and competition and provide you with feedback on any areas of improvement or what you can change to make your keywords more powerful.

Thank you for visiting my site. I hope this information is helpful in the development of your site. If you ever have any questions or want to see information about a specific topic please let me know.

Happy Webmastering,

Phillip