Whilst it is relatively easy to set up your own site these days, the degree of competition in almost any sector you care to name means that getting your site to stand out amongst the crowd is going to take a great deal of effort.

We have talked elsewhere on Lammo about the other factors involved in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) both on-page and off-page. One of the vital elements on your on-page strategy is that of keyword density.

The Right Keywords
Choosing the right keywords is vital in attracting traffic; for the most part this relies heavily on understanding your audience and targeting those key phrases they are most likely to use. Many affiliates already use tools such as the Google AdWords keyword tool and WordTracker in identifying keywords that will 1) actually attract traffic that will monetise and 2) represent a good balance between search volumes versus mad degrees of competition.

Whilst there are several different names for keyword combinations, in their simplest form they are referred to by the number of words that would be entered into a search engine. ‘Head’, “Core” or ‘Shorttail Phrases’ are for many site owners something of a Holy Grail. These are generally key phrases such as “Printer ink”. Naturally these will in general produce a mass of results but will have a lower conversion rate.

‘Longtail Phrases’ are those more specific terms which typically consist of 3 to 5 words (or more) that are searched for in lower volumes but with far greater buying intent, for example, “Canon ink cartridges PGI-5BK”. Using brand names or other relevant extensions to create longtail terms can help to target more specific users. The obvious drawback of longtail phrases is that they will drive far less traffic. However, since that traffic is far more likely to monetise and the degree of competition in both SEO and PPC terms is generally lower for these terms (although still intense in some sectors), a combination of longtail phrases will more often than not outperform the Holy Grail terms.

Sequence of Events
Most experts recommend that a new business identifies its initial choice of keywords before the site is even designed, this makes sense because once the keywords are properly understood, the website can be built around them in order to ensure that all pages have keyword rich relevant content. It is important to remember that multimedia content will not, for the main part, count towards keyword density so it is recommended that most pages of the site should have at least 300 words of keyword rich text content.

Striking the Right Balance
Littering the content with too many keywords can be distracting and downright irritating for visitors and can attract over optimisation penalties (OOP) from the search engines if you go too mad. Thus creating good content whilst reinforcing your target keywords is something of a balancing act. Calculating the keyword density theoretically follows a simple percentage formula:

(Occurrences * Phrase Length) / Content Length * 100

i.e. If your phrase is 2 words long and occurs 10 times in a content unit of 200 words:-

(10 x 2) / 200 * 100 = 10%

However, the count may vary depending on the search engine criteria. For example, some engines count keywords used elsewhere on the page such as the Meta tags, image tags, Title tags as well as the main on-page text content. Others may count from the body tag of the page onwards. In broad terms, when writing text content, a keyword density of some 2% to 4% is generally held to be acceptable and some difference between pages is desirable. Exactly 4% density on each page screams of over-optimisation!

If the density is too low, your page may be considered an irrelevant result for that keyword phrase, however, this doesn’t mean that a higher percentage will produce a more relevant or higher result. Search engines in general attempt to combat spam pages by penalising those pages where the keyword density is clearly too high.

Going Mad
It isn’t just the search engines that will struggle with overly keyword dense content. The following is an example of how content might read if the keyword density is too high. Let’s assume that a new business that sells umbrellas has gone into overdrive with its marketing content.the keywords identified are ‘umbrella/s’ and ‘rain’ :-

“.next time you reach for your umbrella when it rains, ensure that your umbrella is a super ‘anti-rain’ umbrella if you want to ensure that you not only stay dry in the rain, but that your umbrella makes you look good too. An anti-rain umbrella comes in a variety of colours and designs, and these umbrellas are resistant to high winds.”

From the above 60 word content, the word umbrella is used five times, giving it a density of around 8% and lets presume that the content continues to be littered in this manner. This illustrates how distracting keywords can be when used too frequently, resulting in unreadable content and in the user rapidly clicking the dreaded back button!

Keywords and Meta tags
As we have written elsewhere here at Lammo, the judicious use of Meta tags requires that their content SUPPORTS the main on-page content. Remember that some search engines will count overall density including tags as well as the main body content. This is why designing a keyword strategy from the top and ensuring that ALL elements of your on-page SEO support the agreed terms.

Here’s hoping this page doesn’t get penalised for excessive use of the word “umbrella” !!

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