Explain keywords that are not on your site

[VirtualHelp]

All of these questions pertain to keywords....

1. The SEO company was sending my client reports showing her as number 2 or 3 position on #1 page for Google. Yet, she doesnt even have these keywords on her site, however they are close to her keywords. Does that make sense? Now that she is not using the SEO company, should I add the keywords they have reported on? They are mostly 5 word key phrases.

2. I look at other sites and they don't highlight thier keywords in anyway, yet they are ranked fairly high. I was told it is necessary to highlight in some form. Thoughts?

3. Do periods and capital letters matter in keywords? ie. St. Thomas or St. Croix?

4. Is it ok to change keywords or add keywords? If so at what importance to add them? #1 or #2?

thank you in advance for any clues.

[kelsheikh]

1. This question comes up alot in SEO. I guess an example is suitable to help explain why something like that could happen. You might remember (if not you can search it out) a huge thing on the internet regarding G.W Bush and his biography. His biography used to appear (before it was taken down) on the top spot for the term "Miserable Failure" without anything on the site even suggesting such a thing. Well it turns out that people linking to his biography with that term pushed the site to the top of that word. Basically, algorithms are different on every search engine, for Google, they seem to rank heavily on inbound links....to make a long story short.

2. I have never really heard anything about highlighting terms. The only related thing i should mention are some people like to have their Targeted terms in H1,H2,H3,...tags.

3.Periods and capital letters do not matter at all. They are treated the same.

4. Changing your websites content is always important. Remember that content is always king and search engines love text. Write or change whatever you want...just keep on track with the terms your targeting.

[pcdoc]

I recommend http://www.seobook.com/buy-now.shtml

[Brian Mc]

All of these questions pertain to keywords....

1. The SEO company was sending my client reports showing her as number 2 or 3 position on #1 page for Google. Yet, she doesnt even have these keywords on her site, however they are close to her keywords. Does that make sense? Now that she is not using the SEO company, should I add the keywords they have reported on? They are mostly 5 word key phrases...

Sounds like they were pulling a fast one, they added words to the phrases you wanted so they could rank easily on those non-competitive phrases. 'st.croix real estate' is probably pretty competitive, while even I could probably rank you for 'st croix real estate purple monkey'.

[VirtualHelp]

I knew it! thank you so much for your help. I had planned on adding keywords to her site with 4 or 5 words in a phrase. I understand people are using more words per search. Like instead of Fullerton Real Estate they are using Real Estate homes in Fullerton CA

Thoughts?

[drang3d]

Hi Donna, I'd focus on link building for the moment until you get more familiar with onsite optimisation. Link building is getting other relevant sites to link to you using keywords that you want to rank for. You can use article marketing or directory submissions as a start