Are Keywords still relevant?

 I will go through the some of the history of keywords and how they were manipulated to give website the upper hand. When Keywords were introduced it didn’t take long for keyword stuffing to rear its ugly head out. This allowed website developers to put the same keyword in multiple times, on a site in that was the same colour as the background of the page. If you highlight between my E.G. tags you will see what I mean.
E.G. KEYWORDS KEYWORDS KEYWORDS MORE KEYWORDS E.G. 

The Bad

Keyword stuffing as it is called became known as a black hat (hacking) tactic to help boost your way to the top. However, by 2005 Google had changed how they index and rate sites, so that keyword stuffing and many techniques like it actual no longer became a factor in your rank. So much so that it can be detrimental to your website ranking if the Google bot detects you are stuffing keywords every were.
Business owners are still applying basic keyword stuffing to this day. It got to the point where their content itself becomes unreadable. Take this example of Website Developers.
“At our Company, we provide website to all our customer who need a website. We design professional websites and responsive websites to our customers. If you need a website or help with your existing websites, then call us as we are website experts.”
This can really put your reader off what you are trying to sell or convey to them. Not only does it sound ridiculous when you read it out aloud, it is very hard to read and understand the real message you are presenting them. This is still keyword stuffing at its basic form and won’t help you climb the ranking ladder to the top of google. 

Side note 

Now this is not limited to keywords, it is also used for locations. By typing every location in your area and surrounding areas you could get those exact searches that happened to contain a location or area. This is still used in some case to this day, but it is not as effective as it used to be.

The Good 

Now don’t get me wrong keywords have their place and I still believe they play an important part in directing searches to relevant websites, now we know overuse can be bad for search engine optimisation of our site, so what is the optimal ratio we should use. Firstly, the keyword or keyword phrase must be in the title of the page and the URL link.
E.g. the title of this page is “Are keywords still relevant in today’s world?” and the URL is “https://creativedimensions.com.au/are-keywords-still-relevant/” 

Secondly, one of your pages H1 tags should contain your keyword. The first headline of this post contains a keyword. Lastly, you should use your keyword in context once every 150-200. I can’t stress enough how much your keywords need to flow on from what you are typing. Keywords!
Another area you need to look at is images that are contain within your website. The title and alt text need to contain relevant information to the image and your content. For instance, having an image of a dog being wash on a mobile pet washing site may have the title for the image as “Dog being Hydro washed by example company”. Their keyword could be Hydro Dog wash. Their alt text may say “Golden retriever dog getting a mobile hydro dog wash from example company”. Now there is a whole section I could write about on optimizing your images for search engine optimisation, and I may do just that. 

Do you want to play a game? 

There are a few keywords to choose from in this post which do you reckon would be the best keyword or phrase? 

• Keywords?

• Keyword Stuffing?

• Website?

• Website developers?

• Search Engine Optimisation? 

Conclusion 

Ok, so keywords can be useful if used correctly and in the right areas of our site, but can also harm our ranking if we stuff them in every corner of our site. Now the real question is, are Keywords still relevant in today’s day and age… I think Yes! But like everything, moderation is the key to long term gains in your healthy google ranking. Now go out there and change your page content to better your ranking and increase traffic or you can hire a search engine optimisation consultant to step you through the best strategy for your website and business.

Read more about keyword research here: Organic Keywords – How to Easily Find & Improve Your Rankings in 2023? » Rank Math