Internet marketing success stories have varying formulas that they use for success. Keyword Optimisation is one thing that most marketers do to one degree or another.
By striving to be recognised for relevancy for a particular set of words and phrases, you can target a desired audience and increase your chances of making online sales.
How Many Keywords Should Be On Each Page?
The rules and suggestions about SEO, Keyword Optimisation, and keyword density are ever changing. The best thing you can do is to pay attention to your site analytics and to the rate you’re converting browsers into customers and that can give you a good indication of whether or not your strategy is working.
You should pay less attention to the number of times a keyword appears but more attention to whether or not the keywords that exist fit well and naturally into a document. 1% of the time (once per 100 words) is what some suggest. Others suggest having some related keywords in each paragraph with your main phrase in the title, at the beginning and near the end of the text.
Keyword optimisation is subjective. You’ll find various gurus with conflicting advice and the search engines won’t tell you anything because they don’t want anyone gaming the system.
LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing
A good rule of thumb is to optimize for a main keyword phrase. Add to that some secondary keywords as well. Not only could you be recognised for the second set of keywords in the indexing as well as the first but you can also benefit the latent semantic indexing of your site this way.
Latent semantic indexing, or LSI, is another thing many search engines look at and many give more weight to LSI than they do to the fact that you might have a specific number of keywords per 100 words of text.
When the search engines see the word Apple, they’re going to try to figure out if it’s the fruit or the computer so the site will look at other words within your text to make a determination.
This isn’t just necessary when it comes to words with dual meanings but any site that optimises for a main phrase should consider weaving in related words as well. When a search engine sees that your site has rich content related to the subject matter, it will send more visitors your way.
Keyword Proximity
If you’ve got keywords that are close to one another, this can be helpful as well. The first sentence might have a keyword and then the second sentence could have a variation of that keyword. This will tell the search engines that the site appears to have relevancy to a topic.
Content Is King
Above and beyond the number of keywords on your page, the content of your site is most important. While you want to have some Keyword Optimisation in place, and you want to tag your pages appropriately with descriptions and categories, what’s most important is the value of the content itself.
Even if you achieve top spot in the search engines, it’s useless unless you convince the person reading that page to follow your desired call to action. In terms of priorities, make your text say something important first and then optimise the content for search engines and you’ll probably do quite well.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2012
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Agreed – all important tips to health search engine traffic to your keyworded articles.
A general rule of thumb that I use is if it looks like you are forcing the keywords into your sentence, you are likely going to get penalized because this will make your keyword density % jump like crazy.
Act as if you are writing a report for school or something
Great advice, it’s harder and harder to find a good keyword sequence, but I’ve always found 3-5 percent keywords per page is always a good place to start.
Obviously there is alot of debate about keyword density. I tend to the lower side, around 2% or less. At times I have ended up with 1% or even less , mainly because anything higher makes the story sound false
Hi Sean,
I take a lot of care with my keyword density but from now on I’m going to pay more attention to my content.
I was under the impression that 1 – 3 percent density was a good ratio to stick to and noticed that EzineArticles.com which is a reasonably high ranked site has a density limit of 2% which I have taken as an indication of what they perhaps use as a density guideline.
Yea it is hard, as you do want keyword density but it really is about the fine line between effective use and over plugging it, which will turn people off and they will no longer read your blogs
I find that if I write without thinking of my keyword I end up with a density of around 1% or less. When concentrating on keyword optimisation and remembering my keyword while I am writing my text I and up with a higher density and a nicely readable text.
So – good keyword research and remembering it while writing good quality content is my main tip on keyword optimisation
Hi Renee,
That’s a great tip. I generally choose my keyword before I write my article. That way I find it easier to slip it into my posts.
Hi Sean,
Looks like it is a fine balance getting keyword optimization correct. Being a newbie to this, is there a tool we can quickly use to determine the keyword %, or do we do it the hard way?
Sorry if question is newbie-ish.
LSI and content also are in that balancing act. Hmm.. I need to do some more research.
I think sometimes I’m focusing too much on getting my keywords into my text. I need to work more on writing text that flows well. It really is about finding a balance between writing valuable content and keyword optimisation.
Also realise that I haven’t been paying attention to LSI.
There’s so much to learn, however loving the journey!