Have you ever spent hours on end writing content only to find that no one is reading it? Well, the problem may not be in the content itself, instead the problem may be in your keyword optimization of the content. There are numerous ways you can make your content optimized for both your readers and the search engines.
Stick to your topic
Always stick to your topic. If you are writing about septic tanks in one paragraph, don’t go into lala-land and write about programming in the next paragraph. There are two reasons you should never do that. For starters, it confuses the heck out of the poor search bots, and, lets not forget, it confuses the heck out of your readers. Confusion is not a good thing if used improperly (I will be discussing it further in another post).
The second reason you want to stick to a single topic is, you are more likely to use good keywords when talking about a single topic. If you write about completely different subjects in a single post you will always leave out a keyword or a phrase that could have given your post that extra bit of SEO goodness.
So, how many keywords?
There isn’t a single number that works in every situation. I will say, however, that you content should not be “The red house is (keyword) and (keyword) and (phrase) and (keyword)”, as that is keyword spam. Don’t try to stuff as many keywords and phrases as you can into a single sentence. Here is a good example below of an overly “optimized” paragraph:
“Our wonderful mineral water is the best mineral water on this side of Seattle. By buying our mineral water you get not one, but two free bottles of our wonderful “super-charged laxative-free poison-free perfectly safe to drink” mineral water!”
Yeah, I suppose you can tell I was being incredibly sarcastic in that paragraph, but hopefully my point got across. Using a phrase too much can really make a sentence repetitive and awkward to read, and even worse, it can really hurt your search rankings.
The keyword density of any article should be at most 5%. Keyword density is how often a particular keyword or phrase appears in your content. Now, some people say keyword density doesn’t matter, and in a way that is true, but in another way that idea is false. Most search bots can tell if you are spamming them or if you have good content, so I wouldn’t worry too much about density. However, if 1 out of 10 words is one of your keywords, then yes, that is a bit spammy.
So, what is keyword spam?
Keyword spam is, in a nutshell, trying to trick the search engines into thinking your page uses more keywords and phrases that it actually does. Well, that is the grade-school definition of it. For our purposes, keyword spam can be defined in many different ways.
- Having too high of keyword density
- Using worthless, meaningless keywords that have nothing to do with your content
- Trying to hide extra keywords by making the text and background color both the same (white on white, black on black, etc)
- Cluttering your meta tags with keywords
- Clutter any form of a title, whether it be your page title or blog title, with keywords
And the list goes on and on. If your gut tells you that something you are writing may be a bit spammy, then it probably is.
Extra tips
Subtopics
Divide your content into subtopics, like this post. I divide my posts up using the h2 tag, and, if needed, I use the strong tag to divide it up even more. Doing this helps keep your post organized and logical.
Be smart when using keywords/phrases
Now, by use keywords I mean, for instance, instead of writing “SEO” all the time, replace it with “search engine optimization” every once in a while. This will allow your page to be ranked for “SEO” as well as “search engine optimization.” Doing this also helps keep your article from getting repetitive.
Write about what people are searching for
This is not really a search engine optimization tip, but it is a great tip when you are running out of ideas for new topics. Check your log files to find out how people are getting to your site and what keywords they are using. If you see a search phrase pop up a few times and you don’t have a post dedicated to that topic, then write one. When the search bots come around your topic will get ranked for that search, thus increasing your chances of getting a visitor.
And last but not least…
Experiment
Yeah, you heard me right. SEO is nothing but guessing and checking, guessing and checking. You should constantly be trying out new phrases and keywords that may fit into your content. This is a great way to get better rankings, but it is also a good way to see if you have stumbled upon some new niche market. You never know, you may find a group of related keywords that no one else uses but gets searched for all the time.
If you have any more tips feel free to add them to the comments.
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