If there’s one thing that has never changed, it is that keywords are an incredibly important part of SEO. Keywords are what people search for when they are looking to find content, and from the earliest days of web directories through to primitive search engines and up to today’s complex algorithms, keywords have always dominated the thoughts of SEO experts.

How Relevant Are Keywords in 2016

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The Evolution of Keywords and Search

Even today, keywords are very important, but the way that search engines deal with them has changed. Today, if you were, for example, searching for web design in Newry, the search engines wouldn’t just rank sites that mentioned those keywords a lot – they would also look at other factors, such as addresses, local phone numbers and a presence on the main mapping services.

The days of ranking well with just a high density of your chosen keyword on the page are long gone. Today, rather than taking a scatter-gun approach to keyword ranking, you need to laser-target your SEO efforts based on what your audience really wants.

Content with Context

This means that you need to incorporate your keywords into your content in the right way, giving them clear context. You need to pick the right long-tail keywords – the ones that people will really be interested in – and think in natural language rather than aiming everything you do at the search engines.

This is where working with web design teams such as http://www.rycomarketing.co.uk/web-design.html can be useful. They will help you to come up with a site design that is aimed at the end users and that offers people exactly what they are coming to your site for, rather than making the mistake of focusing too much on trying to please an algorithm that no one except the developers fully understands.

Trying to game the search engines would be a losing battle. Google and Bing are always updating their algorithms to fight against link spam, keyword stuffing and duplicate content. The only way you can stay ahead of them is to stop trying to win and instead focus on trying to please the most important people in the world – the customers that visit your website, enjoy your content and pay for your products and services. If they are happy, then your website is more likely to perform well.