Almost all search engines use the words on the pages of web sites as one factor in their ranking equation. This means that if the text on your pages includes your keyphrases, you have a better chance of ranking highly for those phrases than a competing page that does not include them. Some webmasters, aware of this but not wanting their visitors to actually see the text (usually for "aesthetic" reasons), began taking keyphrase-rich text and making it the same color as the page background. For example, if a page had a white background, they would add text to the page, loaded with keyphrases, in the same shade of white.

Because that is what we used to do! We used to ride the waves of information and see where it took us. Remember those day's? We would type in a key word or phrase in our favorite search engine and start clickin'. Each site would have a link leading us to another site, and as you went you would always see something else cool, and click that. You started out looking for apples and ended up with zebras.

The latest Google update nicknamed 'Jagger', has, and is, causing major distress to web site owners the world over. As with most Google updates there is an initial period of movement in ranking position. This can be, and often is, quickly followed by a cavernous empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. However, before you panic and think about leaping from a tall building, or shooting your local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert, take a deep breath and remember this is normal and natural, the dust will settle. Google updates can last anywhere from 1 day up to 8 weeks depending on how extensive the update may be. With an estimated 16-24 billion web pages in its database, is it any wonder these updates take as long as they do?

The reason for writing this article is that I recently read another article from SitePro news which had some interesting ideas about the future evolution of Google.

We have all read lots of articles on how to gather keywords, how to compile a huge keyword list, how to make these keywords relevant to our web site. But exactly what do we do with all these keywords once we have them?