Friday, March 6, 2009

SEO and Keyword Density

By Justin Harrison

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is one of the your most important tools for generating traffic to promote your website. SEO enables you to create organic avenues of traffic to your website, reduce your advertising costs, and increasing your conversions. One of the key aspects of search engine optimization is keyword density, a quantitative measurement that every major search engine takes into account when assigning page rank.

The place to start finding the balance between appearance and performance is SEO. If you never generate traffic, your beautiful page design will never be appreciated. The essentials of SEO include keyword density, linking between pages, meta tags, and proper tagging of images. Each of these factors is something to consider as you begin designing your site.

How do you operationalize your keyword density rule Start by injecting keywords into your content as organically as possible. Google, in particular, and other search engines have developed complex algorithms that penalize your pages when keywords are "stuffed" into the text. The keywords you choose must flow with the text, making good grammar and adding meaning to the page.

Depending on the competition, your keyword density, which, again is the percentage of all the words on a page that are keywords, should be no less than 2% but no more than 5%. Sometimes 7% density will be alright, but any keyword that is used by other sites as spam will hurt your rankings with the search engines.

Another key step in search engine optimization is including links between the pages of your site. Visitors appreciate internal navigation. The websites also appreciate internal navigation, because these links are places you can place keywords that identify your pages. For instance, if you have a page called "Dolphins in Belize," you can link to that page from every other page in your site with a link entitled "Dolphins in Belize." This way you not only signal the search engines that you have created a page, but you tell them what the page is about.

Is there an ultimate rule for integrating page design and SEO Yes, and here it is: Keep it simple! Use flash sparingly. Avoid excessive images. Shun complex design. Paying attention to these vital rules will boost your freedom to do SEO. You always want your pages to be beautiful, you just need to do more with less.

Always take care that the search engines do not mistake your content for spam. Beyond keeping within the 7% limit, your respect for your readers and your providing genuinely content will make all the difference in how well your site will perform.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Check keyword density of a website using free online tool at http://www.webtoolhub.com/tn561367-keyword-density-checker.aspx