15 replies to this topic

[JamesW]

Hey,

Having read quite a lot of information on the subjects of optimising keyword phrases and the density of these phrases, I have come to the following conclusions (but accept these are probably not 100% correct).

1. You should choose two or three phrases for every webpage, and optimise with these in mind.

2. A keyword density of 6-20% is optimal.

With regards to the first point, assuming this to be correct, if I wanted to
rent out holiday widgets, and decided upon the keywords 'widget vacation rentals' and 'widget holiday rentals' am I correct in assuming the following?:

> Title should include these phrases as far as is possible without being too long.
> Meta keywords need ONLY include these phrases
> Meta description should include these phrases, but should also be readable (and encourage clicks).

Looking at the keyword density, I have the following questions:

> How is it possible to achieve such a high density, especially with phrases that don't lend themself to copy? (any exampes would be great).
> Can the words which compose the keyword phrases be seperated on the page, yet still count towards the density? (e.g. Make sure this holiday that you rent a widget ?

Cheers,

James

[Mel]

Hi James;

I do not try to achieve a specific percentage of keyphrases in the page, but write the text first of of all to explain and sell the viewers, keeping in the back of the mind the keyphrases your are targeting, When I am done I reread it and polish it to make it read better and to make sure I have two or more keyphrases where I want them.

If some one were to ask me what percentage of keyword density I target I would have no idea because I never measure it.

In general for the best rankings the key phrase should be contiguous, but portions in the immediate vicinity appear to count to a lesser degree.

[JamesW]

Mel,

Thanks for the info.

Looking at keywords, if you were to choose two or three phrases, would you bother adding any other words which may be relevant, but you weren't specifically targeting, to the title/meta tags/text?

Cheers,

James

[Mel]

Hi James;
I try to stick to no more than two or three relaed phrases to a page, but even then you can sometimes find variations that will lend themselves to inclusion.

Remember that you are writing the page for the viewers too: I usually read my pages aloud the day after I think they are finished, and often find that they need changes when viewed from that perspective.

[Peter]

James,

Point 1 is 100% correct.

Point 2 :

Keyword density is a confusing term because it is calculated in different ways.

what often happens is that it is calculated by averaging 3 parts of a page:

1) title
2) meta description tag
3) copy

Example:
If the title is just the keywords,. it has a density of 100%
If the meta description tag is short it can easily reach 40%
in the copy you have a density of 2 %

100+40+2 devided by 3 = a density of 47%

very confusing,.. it didn't make sense to me either in the beginning when I checked keyword density of some web sites.

Just check how it is calculated before you try to do something really heavy on your own web pages.

Regards,

Peter

[Scottie]

Keyword density is kind of interesting to look at, but the best thing to do is use your keyphrases on the page everywhere they make sense.

Read it aloud and see if it sounds dorky- you've gone too far. Check for generic terms that could be specific using key phrases and still sound good.

If you stick a few more keyphrases in where they don't really work just to build density... you impact the readability/conversion potential of the page. Just do the best you can with what you have and don't worry about the numbers!

[compar]

> Title should include these phrases as far as is possible without being too long.
> Meta keywords need ONLY include these phrases
> Meta description should include these phrases, but should also be readable (and encourage clicks).

You absolutely must put your most important keyword phrase in the Title. If you can get two phrase in so much the better. Most people will start the title with the company name, but if this isn't a keyword you should consider dropping it in favour of more keyword phrases.

Go do a search for any phrase on Google. The first pages returned all have the search phrase in their titles.

There has been a lot of discussion of meta keyword in other threads in this forum. Many search engines and particularily Google apparently ignore this part of your page. However the general wisdom is that it doesn't hurt a page to include them and there are still some SEs who use them. So while there is probably no value in including any thing other than your keyword phrases it might be a place to put in common misspelling of your phrases also.

The description is also important. Many SEs use it in the listing of their search results. So it should be keyword rich but also be your "elevator" sales pitch.

[compar]

Looking at the keyword density, I have the following questions:

> How is it possible to achieve such a high density, especially with phrases that don't lend themself to copy? (any exampes would be great).
> Can the words which compose the keyword phrases be seperated on the page, yet still count towards the density? (e.g. Make sure this holiday  that you rent a widget ?

Cheers,

James

To answer this part of your question I suggest you review all the discussions in the Copywritng section of the forum. There are some very interesting an innovative examples there.

It is certainly better if you can include you keyword phrases exactly as determined by your research -- continous and the same tense and either singular or plural as the case may be. To this end part of your keyword search should be to find phrase that can be used in written text.

Another way to raise density is to break the text up with a lot headings. You can use the heading to introduce the following paragraph or section. And the heading should contain the keyword phrase that the paragraph is going to discuss. For instance there is nothing wrong with this type of structure:

How do you book widget vacation rentals?

Widget vacation rentals can be booked by calling ...............

[Jill]

If you really do have keyword phrases that don't lend themselves to copy, then they really can't be relevant to your business. All keyword phrases lend themselves to copy, by their very nature.

Jill

[JamesW]

Bob and everyone else,

Thanks for the replies and the invaluable advice. I will check out the copywriting thread for further information.

With regards to the point about target phrases lending themselves naturally to copy, I would have to slightly disagree. Admittedly this is often the case, but the keyphrases that I have researched, using WordTracker and Even Better Keywords tool, will, more often that not, include the following examples:

'widgets red uk'
'red widgets uk'
'uk widgets blue'

Cheers,

James

[compar]

..... researched, using WordTracker and Even Better Keywords tool, will, more often that not, include the following examples:

'widgets red uk'
'red widgets uk'
'uk widgets blue'

This message raises an interesting point that maybe others can comment on. It is hard for me to believe that anybody really types keyword phrases like that into a search engine. I think most searches are in normal english. However Google has a "Search within results" feature. So somebody looking for "red widgets" might search on that term first and then if they wanted to find a UK vendor of "red widgets" they would use the "Search within results" feature to narrow the search to all sites with "red widgets" and also in the UK.

My question is this, is Wordtracker reporting on this secondary search? In Google's search box it looks like 'red widgets + uk'. It is a secondary or two part search, but does Wordtrackers database see it as an original search? If so this would explain some of the strange searches that you refer to.

But if this is the case the keyword phrase is not 'red widgets uk". The keyword phrase is 'red widgets' with a secondary search for location. So a page should be optimised -- UK spelling since we are talking about UK -- for 'red widgets' and UK but not the very awkward phrase 'red widgets uk'.

[JamesW]

Bob,

It appears from my research, that both widgets red uk and "widgets red uk" are search phrases that are occuring. WordTracker tends not to come across these phrases too often, but it is tools such as 'Even Better Keywords' which will hsow these listings, as these allow a UK-specific keyphrase search.

[Jill]

James,

When optimizing for a phrase and a location, it's not as critical to put the entire phrase, "red widgets UK" together within the copy. You simply optimize for the "red widgets" phrase itself, and make sure that you also optimize the page for the particular location.

To optimize for the location, you want to be sure to use the location also within the copy. Have an address on every page, and mention where you're located at the top of the page as well.

Your Title tag would be the place to place the phrase in the exact order you'd like it.

Copy always lends itself to keyword phrases, if they are indeed ones people actually use. You just have to think creatively.

Hope this helps.

Jill

[compar]

Bob,

It appears from my research, that both widgets red uk and "widgets red uk" are search phrases that are occuring. WordTracker tends not to come across these phrases too often, but it is tools such as 'Even Better Keywords' which will hsow these listings, as these allow a UK-specific keyphrase search.

I just went to WordTracker to see what I would find for phrase such as "widgets red uk" and for lack of something better to search on I typed in 'web site design uk' and WordTracker reported a count of 124. Then I went to Goggle and type that search phrase in and the first page that came up was www.oyster-web.co.uk/. This site is worth a visit to see how they used a series of keyword phrases ending in 'uk'.

I don't know what exact phrase you have been researching, but it does appear that people in the UK do type in phrases concluding with 'UK'.

[Peter]

I don't know if anyone ever noticed, but the UK has lots of services in the internet especially for the UK.

This means probably that many people from the UK will be searching for services in the UK. Make sure that in your pages you use the right meta tags so the search engines know the site if from te UK. Then your pages will definitily show up in the results where people were looking with the country settings on.

Regards,

Peter