Posts Tagged ‘keyword density’

EzineArticles Says Keyword Density Is Important

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

If you’ve been paying attention to the Google Panda update, you’ve noticed that EzineArticles – the largest article directory online – was hit and suffered a huge traffic loss. That’s a doggone shame. But what is even more of a shame is the article directory’s response to the update.

Chris Knight says he agrees with Google’s update. So do I. But he boasts about EzineArticle’s quality guidelines post Panda. Here are the changes the article directory has made to its quality guidelines and what you’ll have to do to get your articles approved there.

  • Match the author name in your resource box with the byline
  • Limit your links to 4
  • Deliver on the article title
  • Limit reference material within the article
  • Properly format your articles
  • Keep the resource box short (15% of total article length)
  • Maximum keyword density of 2%

In an age when most serious SEOs have given up on keyword density, that last point seems rather strange and out of place. I understand all the other guidelines and agree with them. Perhaps EzineArticles is saying it won’t publish articles that exceed a certain percentage of keyword density because it wants to control spam in its directory. But this guideline sends a signal that keyword density is important. I would not walk away with that impression. Google has more than 200 criteria for making ranking selections. No one, not even EzineArticles, knows all of them, but I’m reasonably sure that keyword density isn’t one of them.

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Posted in Article Marketing | 2 Comments »

Create Deep Links to Keep Your Viewers on Your Small Business Website

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

After you get viewers to visit your small business website, your next goal is to keep them there. Deep links do just that.

Deep links are links to other pages deeper in your website.
They refer to content you’ve already created, information they’ll find insightful–and all you have to do is lead (in this case, link) them to it.

Some web designers go a little overboard with this tactic and aren’t striving to link to relevant content. But why do that when you’ve gone to the trouble to create a dynamic website chalked full of helpful tid-bits, contest and discount information, interviews, checklists, and customer features? Why not use your own material?

Any time you’re writing new content, you’re going to be aware of your keywords.
You will write with focus, not manipulation, and it’s only natural to refer to something you’ve already written just as it’s natural to refer to a past conversation when talking with a friend or co-worker. When you do refer to an internal page, such as a post about a previous how-to article, or a great interview or discount, create a link to that page. It’s that easy–and practical.

If your blog is linked to your page, (and you blog regularly, which you should), you’ll have even more material to reference, Visit your own archives and remind yourself of what you’ve written. You can even link to a comment post and create a whole new article based on a question or comment previously written.

Sometimes you put a lot into a post and for some reason, perhaps you didn’t know as much about keywords at the time, or you weren’t indexed properly, that post got very few hits. By writing an article that is a fresh approach to the subject, you can deep link to that original article and breathe new life into your hard work and create even more keyword density.

Why go to the trouble to create multiple web pages if they’re not going to rank well, or no one knows what wealth of information they contain?

One more smart tip is to utilize your social media contacts and link back to a favorite post or article. Don’t just refer to your main webpage, but take the time to discuss something specific and then link to it. If you comment on someone’s blog, don’t just list your main webpage, but link back to a particular article, hot-to helpful tip, or discount that has some connection with their blog or what was discussed.

Viewers type in keywords to find the websites and blogs that contain the information they’re looking for. So why not make it even easier for them to get past your small business introductory home webpage and delve into the heart of the content you’ve created by creating deep links.

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Posted in Blogging for Small Business, Business Writing, Networking for Small Business, SEO for Small Business, Small Business Internet Marketing, Social Media, Tools for Small Business, Uncategorized, link building, search engines, website development | No Comments »

Is Keyword Density Important?

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

You hear about keyword density a lot in article marketing and SEO. What that means is you take the number of times you use your targeted keyword and divide it by the number of total number of words in your content. So if you write a 1,000 word article and your keyword is “lunch money”, which you use 15 times in the article, then your keyword density is .015%. Article marketing gurus like to say that the optimal keyword density is somewhere between 2%-6%.

There are several things wrong with this theory. Firstly, natural writing without focusing on keyword usage will fall somewhere between that range anyway for well-written content. Secondly, search engines now recognize synonyms for certain words and can ascertain what your content is about on the basis on those synonyms, the use of which will make your writing less staid and robotic. Thirdly, there are other factors involved in ranking web pages in the search engines. Keyword usage is only one factor, and it isn’t even the most important factor. It is important, but it isn’t the most important.

Search engines rank web pages according to many factors – last count, there are more than 150 ranking factors. One of the most important ranking factors – more important than actual keyword usage – is your page headline. I’m not talking about your meta title. I mean the verbiage in your headline, which should be written as an h1 tag and should use your primary keyword. Subheads are also important. Other on-page factors should be considered and some off-page factors like link relevance, anchor text of inbound links, etc. Note that these factors involving keyword usage have nothing to do with keyword density. They are ranking factors involving weight of importance, much like a college professors grading scheme.

Keyword density is a false measure of on-page SEO. You’d be better off learning how to make your pages work using as many of the ranking factors as possible.

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Posted in SEO for Small Business | No Comments »

SEO for Small Business: Why Keyword Density Matters

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

SEO is always about keywords first and foremost, since that is what the search engines look for first. You´ll hear a lot of words being kicked around, but one major question that people have when they are just getting started in SEO is about keyword density, the number of times your keywords should be repeated in your work.

The truth is that opinions vary, but in general, you want to stick with something between 1-5%. This is usually more than enough for the search engine to pick up on those words and realize that your site is about them. However, if you use too many keywords per article or page, you will rapidly end up in trouble.

Keyword stuffing is the art of cramming as many keywords as possible onto one page. It looks unnatural and can actually get you banned by most major search engines, so you want to be very, very careful about this. Usually, anything below 5% is acceptable. You´ll catch the attention of the search engines without making people turn away as soon as they see it. The trick is in doing SEO that is completely readable by humans, not just strings of keywords and keyword phrases!

Keyword density is an important part of SEO, especially if you are hiring out the writing work. You´ll need to be able to tell the writers how many times to repeat your keywords in the content they write. This will really help your business and your SEO.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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Posted in SEO for Small Business | No Comments »