Thoughts and Facts about Keyword Density

What is the right keyword density? Do all search engines like same keyword density? How to avoid keyword overstuffing penalties? All this questions are answered in this article. Moreover, you will get some additional thoughts and points over keyword theory. Get involved! Keyword density as an optimization unit. Keyword density is a correlation of quantity of all words on your page with quantity of keywords. Keyword density is usually expressed in percents. For instance if you have 100 words and seven of them are keywords – your page’s keyword density is 7%. Keyword density is always measured per-page, never per site, because search engines consider a page to be the smallest independent unit. What keyword density is allowed by search engines? All search engines have a lot of

criteria to measure a web page. Keyword density is one of them and it is one of appreciable ones. Search engine algorithms are complicated mathematical measures and each search engine has it’s own – that is why allowed keyword density can vary for different search engines. If you are targeting one search engine – you can try to find out it’s allowed keyword density and keep it. If you target two or more – keep minimal keyword density allowed by one of them. What are actually keywords and how search engines find out what are keywords on my page? We know that keywords are search terms we seek, but a search engine doesn’t knows what keywords have you actually installed in your web page, unless you list them in META keywords tag (however, it is more like that the majority of search engines ignore this tag). So how do I count keyword density. Count the maximum repeating words! Even if your site is about apples, but there are more “garden” words – search engine will count maximal quantity of similar words. This means that you have a total of 100 words, 10 of which are “apple” and 30 of them are “garden”, you can get penalized for “garden” word. Note that articles, pronouns and other keyword-neutral words are not counted as keywords. The most convenient way to get full keyword analysis of your page is to use appropriate software. There are a lot of free and pay keyword analysis tools online. There are another significant notion in counting keyword density of a page – keyword phrase. You know that some keywords consist of two words – product names, geographical names, etc. Search engine algorithm is also looking keyword phrases, which are defined by finding repeating keyword phrases. Clear? I hope so. How do I count up right keyword density? It is a unique way of research for each webmasters. Yes, there are some commonly known recommendations, but during last two years I’ve heard more than hundred numbers of “right” keyword density. Create a couple of page with different keyword density and optimize ‘em in the same way (this doesn’t means creating a couple of identical pages with different keyword density, because you will trigger duplicate content filter doing so) and see the results. Sometimes it takes many time to find out the right value. Some of my sites are under 10% limit, some have no more than 5% - you will find your best quantity soon, trust me. However, there are some variables which can influence allowed keyword density – position of keywords. I believe that keywords in H1 are considered heavy, just as keywords in links text, keywords in “bold” tag and those, which are placed close to the beginning of the document. That is why there is no definite quantity of keyword density.

source: http://searchenginejournal.org/thoughts-and-facts-about-keyword-density.html

How to Use Google Webmaster Tools for SEO Inspiration

Ever since Google Webmaster Tools added the so called “search queries” data I’ve become a huge fan of them. I’ve listed the 10 Google SEO tools everybody should use in the past but to be honest I focus on three of them right now Google Insights, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools for SEO inspiration. The wealth of information GWB offers is like a goldmine.

The tool-set has grown over the years steadily but I was neglecting it. By now there are numerous ways to use Google Webmaster Tools for SEO. Again I will focus on three of them here and explain how to use GWB for

1. Keyword Research
2. Link Building
3. CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization

In case you haven’t used Google Webmaster Tools yet at all I strongly advise you to read this excellent intdroductory series by Search Engine Guide.

Keyword Research
While Google offer several outstanding keyword research tools, Google Webmaster Tools enable you to find out keywords that really matter for your actual site. Hugo Guzman has written a good post on how to find your most valuable keywords using it.

The idea is to seek out the low hanging fruit of keywords already ranking on the verge of top 5 and to push them higher via low level SEO to get a high ROI. This is a really neat concept. Usually I’d focus on the big earners, high traffic keywords and important queries. Probably everybody else does as well so by focusing on these “almost there” terms you save time an money not fighting that many competing websites.

Link Building 
I’m often surprised at which of my pages get the links and where from when checking “Links to your site”. Even orphaned pages (that have no connection to my main website) get inbound links. Also it’s amazing to find out that sites you have never got any significant traffic from link to you. These are often crappy scraper sites and other automated set ups but sometimes you’ll find a gem.
Then you can target these sites to get even more links. For example you can discover who links to you on Tumblr and then follow these users. While repeat links from the same do not count as much as from new ones there is only a finite number of places in a given industry so there is no problem with getting links from the site again and again. Especially authority sites that link more that once to you are a great asset.
You’ll discover these links by using other link tools be it paid ones or Yahoo Site Explorer but often you get too many links, mostly nofollowed ones via these tools to find the good or great ones.

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CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization
You can find out your best and worst converting keywords. The first step of a conversion is converting a searcher to a visitor. You fail already here in most cases and it’s quite surprising which keywords and phrases get the highest CTR (click through rates). For instance we have a 100% CTR on the query [rss meta]. The searchers end up on a tiny post from 2006.
In contrast our huge resources lists often get quite low CTR. Does it mean that we should write dozens of microblogging like posts instead of one gigantic list? The 100% CTR is no anomaly, it’s just the most striking example.

Also we rank high for [seo services uk] and similar queries but the CTR is disappointing. It seems that we need landing page optimization as our competitors target the query directly in their titles and have extra pages for it. At SEOptimise users land on the homepage and don’t find the term “SEO services” immediately.

How do you use Google Webmaster Tools? Does it inspire you to take concrete steps? Do you optimize your websites based on GWT data? I often check Google Insights, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools for SEO inspiration. Whenever I need some input on what to write about I check what’s popular already and don’t rely solely on my imagination. I can check popular items on Topsy, Delicious or elsewhere but Google offers me much more accurate data for my niche and particular site..

source: seoptimise