How to choose keywords
Please note: this is a temporary test document for use in internal testing only.
Adding keywords to a document or web page is not always as easy as it sounds. It’s important to think somewhat
laterally, and come up with words that make this document/page unique. Think about what words other people
might use when searching for it, whether they’re colleagues in your department, staff in another unit, or the general
public. Here are some main areas to think about when choosing keywords.
Keywords should include:




Synonyms: include like terms that may be used by people attempting to search for the content. E.g. for
content referring to Associate Lecturers, a useful keyword would be 'tutors'.
Acronyms and initialisms: if the content contains acronyms include the full term as a keyword, and vice
versa. E.g. if the content includes 'TMA' have 'Tutor Marked Assignment' as a keyword, and vice versa.
Variant spellings: for example, 'donut' and 'doughnut'.
Key terms that may already be in the content being analysed, but don’t duplicate terms unnecessarily.
There’s especially no need to repeat terms in the page/document title.
Keywords shouldn’t include:



Punctuation: avoid punctuation unless it is used in a proper noun, e.g. Faculty of Mathematics, Computing
& Technology.
Repetition: individual terms from keyword phrases do not need to be separately entered (e.g. 'classical
music' is sufficient, 'classical' and 'music' do not need to be separately recorded).
Terms relevant to all content, e.g. 'The Open University'. Repeating keywords across a lot of pages
actually reduces search efficiency.
Good keywords are:





Nouns: keywords should generally be nouns or noun phrases, verbal nouns are also acceptable, e.g.
'studying'.
In natural language order: compound terms should appear in their natural language order, e.g. 'organic
chemistry' not 'chemistry, organic'.
Plural: generally use the plural form, but there is no need to do this absolutely, as there may be a semantic
difference between the singular and plural of a term, e.g. 'art' and 'arts'.
Lower case: unless a term is a proper noun or full term of an acronym or initialism.
In British English, e.g. 'centre' not 'center'. However, if the text specifically uses an American English
term both variances of the term can be used as keywords.
A note on search features



Stemming is use within the system, so that the search is able to identify and return words with the same root
term, so it will return simple plurals, e.g. a search for glove will return gloves, and similarly, it will return
simple variants, e.g. a search for beach will return beached or fly will return flying.
The system will not return terms if the string is not found in its entirety within the returned word, i.e. a
search for leaf will not return leaves, stable will not return stability, nor will argue return arguing, as the
search term does not exist as a complete string within these variants.
To return variant terms, you must search using the common root that will be part of any variant that is
returned, e.g. claim would return, claims, claiming, claimant, claimed, claimable, and claimless. Search
will not return prefixes to terms, so a search for conduct will not return misconduct, and ability will not
return disability.
Final tips to remember:



Home pages should have keywords relevant to the whole website; content pages should have unique
keywords specific to each page.
You shouldn’t exceed a total of 250 characters for keywords.
There should be 5 to 10 keywords - but don’t include inappropriate keywords just to make up the
numbers. If you can only think of two, that's fine, don’t worry about it!