Keywords are definitely important to get right. You need to know what search words people use on the Internet when they are looking for the products or services you offer. There is another big element to keyword matching that many people forget, or perhaps, they simply do not have the time, money or desire to invest in it: A Preponderance of Relevant Content.

A Preponderance of Relevant Content

Google doesn't only take the words a person enters in search and try to match them directly against keywords that have been found on web pages. Google also has a record of semantically related words. For example, when a person searches for "wooden chair", Google might find a match using related words, like seat, or bench.

Try this experiment:

At the URL: http://labs.google.com/sets, enter the words sofa, couch and bench, then click the "small set" button. Google will display a list of words that have something in common with the words you entered. Who knows how Google works all that out, but when you decide on your own keywords for your web page, run them through Google Sets to discover, at least according to Google, their semantically related words.

Run your keywords through Google Sets to discover their semantically related words.

When you are blogging on your subject, use semantically related words in addition to your keywords. Over time, Google will see that your website doesn't just contain the exact search words entered by the searching person, but is talking all over the subject the search words relate to.

That will give you a higher MatchScore than the keywords would on their own.