Web-spam, click to enlarge
I’m nervous about bringing up search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords for blogs, because I know some bloggers will take a good thing much, much too far.
Yes, it’s all about the keywords, but think indexing
Got a reference book with an index in your office? Back in the day, you were guaranteed to have dozens of these bulky tomes lying around because every software program came with a reference guide. Unfortunately, nowadays you’re lucky if you get a skimpy PDF help file.
If you can’t find a reference book with an index in your office, take the time to visit a library, and look through some real, paper-based indexes in the backs of reference books.
The first reference book that comes to hand in my office is DeamWeaver 8, The Missing Manual, an O’Reilly publication.
OK, so flipping to the index at the back of the book, on page 831, we find:
tables
absolute positioning and,
accessing multiple
adjusting dimensions
aligning
background color
borders and,
building content
controlling cells with CSS
I’ve left off the page numbers, because they’re not relevant, and the index notation for “tables” goes on for much longer than I’ve used here, but it’s enough to give you the idea of how an INDEX works.
You can use exactly the same indexing style when you’re developing keywords for a blog posting, or a Web page.
General – then specific
In the above indexing example, you can see that the index notation goes from the general “tables” to the very specific – all about tables.
If you use this method to develop keywords for your blog, you’ll never sink to the depths of the ridiculous Web-spam example in Matt Cutts’ post above. This method is not the only way to develop keywords, but it is traditional. It’s for your READERS, and therefore, it works just fine for the search engines too.
Technorati Tags: blogging, SEO, keywords, indexing, reference, indexing strategy
