How to Improve Keyword Density on Your Site

The search engines use a number of factors when ranking a page within their index. They use a series of on-page and off-page factors. Of the on-page factors, Keyword Density becomes a key component.

A well optimized page will benefit both the user and the search engine spiders. Keyword density is one of the main contributors as to how users and search engines use your website. Keyword density is measured by taking key phrases and measuring the ratio of the phrases to the total number of search engine indexable words in a page. This includes the “invisible” content such as meta tags and image alt tags. Ideally pages should be between 400 and 600 words and have at least one important phrase on the page, repeated throughout, while keeping the page intelligible to readers.

When writing copy for your website, there are a number of ways to ensure that you utilize proper keyword density throughout your web pages.

Seven Ways to Improve Keyword Density

1. Insert Keywords Into Page Titles – this pertains to the title tag that is commonly associated with the meta data of your site pages. You page titles should include keywords preferably near the beginning of the title for optimal effect. This helps communicate the subject matter of the page to the search engines and more importantly your users. The title also appears in the results pages of the search engines and is often bolded depending on the user’s search query.
   
   
2. Insert Keywords into Headings – Include keywords in the heading of the page copy itself. Ensure that the main heading of your page uses heading tags with the "h1" heading tag considered to be the most important.
   
   
3. Place Keywords in ALT Text – if you have images on your web pages, ensure that you place descriptive alt text on the image that is key word rich. Do not spam your ALT Tags.
   
   
4. Add Keyword Rich Anchor Text throughout your pages – when interlining your site pages, you should link from keywords as the destination page with receive better Inbound Linking (IBL) merit from the search engines.
   
   
5. Incorporate Keywords into Page URLs – helps convey the theme of the page and is one of the many factors that search engines will use to rank a web page.
   
   
6. Add Keywords to your Copy – make use of your important keywords in the actual copy of your site pages. If you want to be found in the search engines for “green widgets” you better make sure that your page copy features the phrase “green widgets”.
   
   
7. Incorporate the Use of a Keyword Rich Footer – ensure that your footer appears on all pages. Include links to important product pages using keyword rich anchor text. For example if your site sells widgets make sure that you include important keywords in the footer. Blue Widgets | Green Widgets | Large Widgets | Small Widgets | Widget Information | Widget Resources |

From an SEO point of view, without being spammy, pages such as the home page should have a keyword density of about 6-12 % based on 400 words of content, with an emphasis on your most important key phrases. A well optimized page should have a keyword density of about 6-12% based on 400-500 on-page words of copy. We have seen top ranking sites with a KW density of as high as 20% on their homepage without being penalized by the search engines.

Benefits of Improving Keyword Density Throughout Your Site

• Helps the site become more authoritative for related keywords that can help drive qualified traffic to your site.
  
  
• Helps communicate the topic of your site pages
  
  
• Helps convey a theme around your sites content
  
  
• Acts as an interception point in keyword searches so that users have an easier time finding your site when searching for non-branded key phrases that are descriptive of your business.
  
  
• Maintaining a keyword density of 6-12% throughout the site can improve organic search rankings which in turn can result in the site being able to rank higher for traffic driving phrases.
  
  
• Is a cost efficient way of increasing your organic/natural search ranking in the search engines. Increased Visibility = Higher Rankings. Higher Rankings = More Site Traffic. More Site Traffic Leads to More Conversions. More conversions lead to Better ROI. Better ROI leads to on-going success.

Each of the search engines treats keyword density in different manners as it pertains to their ranking algorithms. The main things to keep in mind with keyword density is to think about relevancy for the user and avoid being spammy. The use of too many keyword occurrences can make the copy read poorly and can detract from the purpose of the page.

Useful Resources on Keyword Density

Keyword Density Defined on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_density

Keyword Density Analyzer:
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density

“HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR SEO?”

I thought that it would be a good idea to spend some time reviewing what you’ve learned in the past few months through the SEO Elite newsletter.

One thing to remember in any learning process is that unless you apply what you’ve picked up on a daily basis, you’re not going to benefit from your investment. It doesn’t matter how expensive or valuable that advice is; even simple, common sense tips are rendered meaningless by a lack of application.

To help you recap what you’ve learned so far, I’ve prepared a short quiz (20 questions) on the most important SEO topics. I hope that at the end of it, you will be able to better evaluate your current SEO efforts, and should be able to pinpoint the areas where you need to improve.

The quiz is divided into 3 sections (On-page optimization, link building and general SEO), and is geared towards the basics – so hopefully you should all be doing pretty well in it.

The answers are at the end, but please don’t peek :

Let’s get started.

SEO Elite Refresher Quiz #1

On-Page Optimization

1. Your website sells Green Widgets – what is the best Title tag for your main page?

a.	Get Green Widgets, Buy Green Widgets, Green Widgets, Green Widget
b.	We have Cheap Green Widgets with great prices and selection
c.	Buy Green Widgets | Discount Widgets
d.	Home | Greenwidgets.com

2. Your site map has more than 100 links to your pages. Do you:

a.	Create a hierarchy of links, and split up the site map into multiple pages.
b.	Keep adding new links, no problem.
c.	Add a second page to your site map and add new links to that.
d.	Stop adding links to your site map completely.

3. How many words should you consider writing in a page of pure content (such as an article, a blog post or a product review)?

a.	100-200
b.	500-800
c.	200-400
d.	800+

4. What is the optimum keyword density you should aim for?

a.

2%-5%.

5. What should you put inside meta tags?

a.	Put your full keyword list in the meta keywords tag, and put your most important keywords in the meta description tag.

6. How should you use images on your site?

a.	Use the alt tag to accurately describe the each image, and include descriptive content around each image.

7. Which style tag is preferred by the W3C for emphasizing important text?

a.

Link Building

8. What types of websites are most trusted by search engines (authority sites)?

a.	High PR websites

9. Which of these sites will provide the most valuable link?

a.	A PR 7 website

10. Suppose that you were offered the following 4 choices as a link – which one would be the most valuable?

a.	An optimized contextual link (a link as part of a page’s content with proper anchor text) from a closely related PR 5 site’s main page content

11. If you were building links for greenwidgets.com, what would be your strategy in choosing anchor text?

a.	Buy high PR links from closely related sites that offer traffic as well as link wealth

12. Which of these four is the most important in assessing a link?

a.	The anchor text

13. How many links should you get for your site in the first 6 months (on average)?

a.	50-70 links a month

General SEO

14. What does PageRank technically measure?

a.	The linking power carried by one particular link

15. What does the term “Sandbox” describe in reference to Google’s SERPs?

a.	The ranking factors affecting all new websites that are targeting highly competitive keywords before targeting less competitive keywords

16. What is the best way for websites with very little content (like ecommerce stores) rank highly for competitive product terms?

a.	They have a lot of natural links (one-way, contextual) with optimal anchor text from a wide variety of websites

17. Which of these will NOT get your site penalized in Google?

a.	Thousands of automatically-generated pages built only for the search engines

18. Which of these five methods will not give you an accurate estimate of the search demand in a niche?

a.	Overture search term figures

19. When designing the site structure of a website, which of the following statements is NOT a good idea?

a.	Make a site map that points to each page on the site

20. Which is the best method of getting traffic to your site?

a.	Pay-per-click ads

Ok, now that you’ve answered all the 20 questions, compare your answers to the answer sheet below. This was a fairly basic quiz, so if you get less than 10 right, you should seriously consider reviewing the material in this newsletter. However, if you got more than 15 right, congratulations – you’ve got the basics right. Make sure that you apply these principles to your websites as well, otherwise you wont see good rankings.

Answers Key:1. c 2. a 3. b 4. d 5. c 6. a 7. b 8. e 9. b 10. a 11. d 12. a 13. c 14. c 15. a 16. a 17. b 18. d 19. c 20. e

Stay tuned for the next lesson where I’ll be going through the answers for each of the questions above in more detail. It’s critical that, at a bare minimum, you can fully grasp all the questions above. So look for my email in the next few days.

The SEO Engine Score™ - Finally a Standardized Metric for the Internet

The SEO Engine Score™ represents a relative scoring mechanism that all Search Engines use. It incorporates everything -- from Link Flow® to Bad Neighborhood™ penalties, Purchased Link Detection™ penalties, Duplicate Content penalties...just about everything you can think of that a regular Human Being would use to attempt to compare two Webpages to each other.

A common misunderstanding is that the SEO Engine Score™ indicates whether or not a particular Webpage is going to rank well. This is simply not true. The SEO Engine Score is a measure of the efficiency of that Webpage's Gross Total Link Flow® only. To illustrate: a Webpage about "Green Widgets" might have a very low SEO Engine Score™; however, because there aren't any other "Green Widget" Webpages on the Internet, the Webpage is still a prominent #1 in the Search Results. Make sure that you always bear this in mind when comparing SEO Engine Scores™.

Improve your SEO Engine Score™
Webpage Scorecard Screen





Investigate how each SEO Engine Score is calculated!

The SEO Engine™ provides a SEO Software Interface screen called the "Webpage Scorecard", for each Webpage on the Internet. It contains all the answers you need to increase your Website’s SEO Engine Score™ and it’s rankings in the search results of public Search Engines. There are many factors revealed by your SEO Engine™ report that will increase your SEO Engine Score™, and thus your Net Total Link Flow -- which is a determining factor in ranking results on public Search Engines.

Most categories of the SEO Engine™ offer a link to the Learning Center that will give you suggestions on how to improve various components that factor in to your SEO Engine Score™. For example, when Dangling Links are revealed, simply click on the green question mark in the Dangling link category to learn what they are, and how to fix them. Once Dangling Links have been fixed, simply re-crawl the Website to see how fixing this particular issue helped the SEO Engine Scores™.