How do search engine crawlers pick out keywords?

“SEO is the business of getting found, even if the users did not know that they were looking for you all along."

The first basic step to any search engine optimization project is finding the right keywords. There are many misconceptions and confusions about the relation between search engine crawlers and keywords.

One of the common question is “How does a search engine recognize which word is the targeted keyword?” Those of you who believe that Google has a list of keywords provided to spiders that later come scavenging to your website hunting for it, are wrong. Bots (i.e. Search engine crawlers or spiders) really cannot read in the literal sense.  Crawlers don’t come to your website thinking “hey let me learn about SEO services today and let’s hope this website will give me all the information I need on SEO”. Crawlers can’t process information like humans. What they actually do is pick on patterns and flow of repetitive letters which forms a word in the text content of your website and selects one that’s repeated fairly often.

Let’s explain the above example of ‘SEO Services’ as a chosen keyword:

A search engine robot when crawls does not knows what a particular word is, but they observe which letters repeat over and over again and they file this information. This pattern might be complete gibberish, but patterns do stand out. A crawler skims and decides on keywords by filing the pattern shown below:

Text Text Text SEO Services Text Text Text

Text Text SEO Text Text Text Text Text Service

SEO Service Text Text Text Text Text Text Text

Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text

 

Bingo! They now realize that ‘SEO Services’ is the keyword as it is repeated fairly often so it must mean something. Crawlers use this information to display your site for this particular keyword when searched by web users.

The next problem one might face is to decide ‘How many keywords should you target per page?’

 

As you can notice when trying to stuff in too many keywords nothing will stand out and the crawlers will be unable to identify your main keyword. This will dilute the entire effectiveness of keywords you want to have a high ranking when searched.

The importance of keywords stuffing has reduced due to unnecessary manipulation and using keywords too indiscriminately rendering the text almost useless. Crawlers are now counting heavily on off-site factors to reduce the manipulations of on-site optimization.

After selecting your target keyword and framing the content, read it out loud once or twice, to check if it sounds forced and silly.  This will prevent you from shoving keywords forcefully.  In case it is a struggle to write a good content around your keywords hire a professional SEO content writer/copy writer to do a professional job. It’s a small investment when compared to the benefits you will reap.

 Along with luring the crawlers to index your page, don’t lose focus of your target audience. You might be in the top ranks, but if viewers bounce off within first 10 seconds from your website you will be unable to achieve your online marketing goals.