Written on August 9th, 2005 at 10:08 am by Darren Rowse
Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs - Using Keywords
Having looked at Offsite Search Engine Optimization Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you might like to keep in mind as you develop your blog - (or Onsite techniques). There are many of these and it might take a few days to get through them all - bear with me.
Keyword Rich Content - identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the question ‘how do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?’ What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing. The answer to this question will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.
These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:
Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content - but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% - I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.
One last word of warning and disclaimer (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) - don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings - but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords - these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy - don’t fall for the temptation.
This post is part of the Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs Series
12 Responses to “Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs - Using Keywords”
Dustin
August 9th, 2005 10:27 am
I do some SEO tools programming on the side, and through a non-insignificant data set, we’ve found that optimal keyword density is closer to 3-4%. Getting over 7% starts hitting google’s spam filters, and 20% is definitely too high. Every 5th word as a keyword? That’s just ridiculous.
Also remember that Google will filter out stop words and phrases (the, and, or, a, an, it, …). So if your density is 5% on the raw page, it may be higher once you take those words out, and start hitting spam levels.
The better way to do it is by figuring out how dense your keyword phrase is in your document based on the number of different noun phrases. I didn’t write this one, but you can find a tool to do that analysis at the following URL: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
Just wanted to provide some more insight.
Cary
August 9th, 2005 11:59 am
So in response to the above comment, in a blog setting, would keyword density be based on only the actual post, or on the entire page? ie, does Google understand and filter out the basic links, navigation, etc that is on ALL of the pages, or do these get worked into the keyword percentage also?
Lei
August 9th, 2005 2:54 pm
Bolding the keyword(s) really does work. I just noticed with a post I wrote less than an hour ago that Google adsense already picked it up. Amazing.
Gerard McGarry
August 9th, 2005 5:13 pm
Darren
On the point about using keywords in image ALT tags, these are primarily for accessibility. If you can marry a description of the image with some well-chosen keywords, that’s great.
We shouldn’t sacrafice accessibility in the name of SEO, though.
Gerard
Dave
August 9th, 2005 5:42 pm
Great post Darren, I think it covered most of the key issues surrounding SEO.
I guess the biggest danger is to concentrate too much on keywords and not enough on the content. I tend to write something to make as much sense as possible, and then revisit it, looking at where certain terms can be replaced unobtrusively with keywords that I wish to target.
I’ve noticed since changing my site structure and the way things are labelled to clearly identify them (and the biggest change seems to be from giving each page is own unique title) that my search engine ranking has crept upwards for nearly all the keywords I’m interested in.
Mildly tweaking and then letting the site settle, along with using google sitemaps seems to be doing the trick. You need to give the engines time to reindex and access your site, which means doing a tweak at a time and then leaving it for a few days. Theres a real temptation to begin with to really hammer the changes through - but this doesn’t allow you to see what changes are really effective.
Dag Joar
August 9th, 2005 5:58 pm
Just an observation/question:
The keyword for this blog entry is ‘keyword’ right? It was used 17 times :)
Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs: Blog Tips - enternetusers
August 9th, 2005 9:30 pm
[…] naturally impact the way you blog. Continue Reading this Series at - Offsite Techniques - Keywords
[…]
Miha
August 10th, 2005 12:03 am
I’m with Gerard about using keywords in image ALT tags. It sure is spamming if the keywords used are not relevant with image.
My Internet Marketing And Promotion Blog » Blog Archive » Search Engine Optimization - The Eternal Topic…
August 10th, 2005 12:42 am
[…] ation - The Eternal Topic Darren follows along today with the next in his SEO Tips series “Using Keywords”. […]
Cary
August 10th, 2005 12:53 am
It didn’t seem to me that anyone was suggesting spamming the ALT tags.
Neil Patel
August 11th, 2005 11:45 am
One of the main uses of Alt tags is for search engine optimization, but you want it to stay relevant with the picture. One of the main purposes of Alt tags is for section 508 compliancy, which is why you want the tag to be representative of the picture.
Exclusive Concepts' Internet Marketing Blog
August 13th, 2005 1:59 am
Weekly Roundup
Keyword rich content : in titles, url of page, in outbound links, in bold tags, in heading tags and in the first few sentences…. Stephen Baker writes about Google’s new patent and smarter algorithms in Advice on how to optimize your site for sear…
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