SEO Codes

In the previous post, integrating keywords into a site copy was tackled. Now, your next concern is how many times you actually need to repeat your keywords to get results.  Opinions on this matter may vary, but in general, you want to have your keywords appear anywhere between 2-10 times per every 100 words of text. This ratio is also known as “keyword density.”

Keyword density is a combination of the number of times a keyword or a keyword phrase in proportion with other words that appears on a webpage. The more times the keyword appears in relation to the total number of on page words, the greater the keyword density and the more times that the other words appear, the lower the proportion of keywords, resulting in a lighter keyword density. In the context of SEO, keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a webpage is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase.

As a general rule, you can try to integrate your keywords as often as you can without breaking up the natural flow of your copy. Thus, good copywriting is an essential component of SEO and at the end of the day, your page content needs to appeal to people as well as search engines.

The various search engines including Google consider keyword density as part of their search algorithm. Each search engine has a different mathematical equation regarding the density of keywords that is rewarded with higher search ranking placement. There is also a different level of tolerance between the different search engines as to the degree of density permitted before a penalty is imposed.

Keyword density is also important because search engines use this information to categorize a site's theme and the perfect keyword density will help achieve higher search engine positions. Take note also that a keyword density needs to be balanced correctly. If it is too low, you will not get the optimum benefit, and if it is too high, your page might get flagged for “keyword spamming.”

The first step to any SEO campaign is to identify the search terms or keywords for which you want your site pages to be found in search engines. But once you have selected the search terms you want to target, the next step is to integrate these terms into your site pages to make them relevant.

The pages that you select for optimization should be those that offer the most focused content relating to the terms you want to target. You can also optimize as many pages as you like, but each page should focus on no more than one or two of your target terms.

There are a number of variables that search engines use to produce the results they deliver but the visible text content of your pages is a primary factor that search engines utilize to find, index and deliver your pages to prospective site visitors. For a search engine to justify producing your page in search results for a given term, it needs to have evidence that your page is truly relevant for the term, and having the term within the text content of your pages provides such evidence.

Make sure also that your target search term appears at least once in your introductory paragraph and page header so that search engines as well as visitors can immediately recognize the term in the content above all your other page copy and give context to the content of your page.

Most importantly, try to integrate the search terms into your page copy in a natural fashion so that the terms make sense in context and complement the overall message of the page content. Don’t indiscriminately load your page copy with terms that do not make sense in context. Doing this will leave a negative impression on visitors once they arrive at your page, and could be considered Spam.