SEO Blog

There will be people that claim you can’t rank without regular usage of keywords within the body copy and Meta. Others though rubbish the notion that keyword density has anything to do with rankings anymore; as long as they are included, the frequency shouldn’t matter. So who is right?

Well, if you think that you need to use your keywords dozens of times on every page, then you’re certainly barking up the wrong tree. When search engines were using very basic ranking factors (i.e. before Google and PageRank), the number of terms used and their frequency was vital. This is why you’d have issues like hidden text, where site owners would just repeat terms hundreds of times using white words on a white background, so nobody could see.
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If you’re using content for your website or other online marketing material you have probably asked yourself, ‘how many keywords should I be using within each piece of content?’ Keywords form part of the optimisation process for your website and they are the key terms, words and phrases that you use within written text. You implement these so that when someone types in one of these terms in a search engine, your website has a greater chance of featuring in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

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When you choose the keywords that you want to target, you will probably use a fair amount of common sense, logic or whatever else you might wish to call it. In addition though, you should look to add some statistical evidence to support these ‘theories’ and provide them with a little substance. This is where keyword research comes to the fore.

However, even when the theory is absolutely rock solid and it supports your own beliefs, this doesn’t always mean that it will work in practice. So how can you tell when it’s actually falling flat and how easy is it to identify?

Well, your first indicator is always going to be your search rankings. This doesn’t mean having a look on your own computer, where results are likely to be personalised and highly skewed. You need to find out your exact ranking, the one which Joe Average will find if they search for your target term.
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It might sound a little convoluted, but PPC can be an extremely valuable SEO tool. If you’re looking to test the effectiveness of a keyword, optimising a page and waiting for rankings to appear can take time and prove ineffective. However, with Pay per Click advertising you can get strong results in a matter of weeks.

So how does it work?

Well, imagine you’ve got a few keywords that you’re toying around with for your homepage. How do you know which one will actually convert? Of course you can have an educated guess, but sometimes that’s simply not enough. If you get it wrong, you could attract traffic, but not get the conversions that you’re looking for. This can quickly become a major issue.
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It perhaps seems an unlikely mix, SEO and rap music, but the two share more similarities than you first thought – at least that’s what Wired magazine suggests.

As improbable as it may appear, Wired has turned to rapper Lil B to demonstrate its ‘recipe for search-optimized success‘. It’s not as crazy as it sounds either; in fact a lot of the points made are extremely valid, if a little (I assume) tongue in cheek.

For instance, Lil B has gained a huge amount of publicity by publically challenging a number of well-known figures, including Kanye West and Kevin Durant. Within the context of the article, this is viewed as link bait – a kind of ‘SEO is dead’, but slightly more creative. True enough, that’s a good way to get attention, links and also build social media mentions around your name/brand. All good so far.
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It’s all well and good telling somebody that using keywords within their site content is good, but this generally creates more questions than it does provide answers. How many keywords should each page have? Should you use variations? Where should they be included?

The issue with keywords is that if you get it wrong, it can be costly. If you think it’s a good idea to cram as many on one page as is humanly possible, then you’re wrong. Similarly, if you’re of the opinion that a couple scattered here and there will work a charm, SEO probably isn’t for you.
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If you’ve written some excellent content and are looking for ways to get a little more impact, you might be tempted to put some phrases in bold. More likely than not you will have seen this on a number of sites and you might be surprised to learn that it can actually have an impact on your site’s SEO.

Moderation is key here though. Putting everything in bold is just going to confuse your visitors and the search engines. However, if you’re sensible and just highlight usage of a particular term, this will highlight to the search engines the keyword in question is one that is relevant to the page. As a consequence, you could see a slight boost in your rankings.
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Succeeding online always seems so simple. You read a few blogs, they inspire you to build a site, you start optimising a little and hey presto you are…exactly where you started still.

If you have started a site as something of a hobby, rather than a business, then it is easy to get distracted and simply dump it when it appears to be failing. You’ve got only a handful of inbound links (mostly from social profiles and directories), no PageRank and no rankings within Google. What was all that nonsense about making millions by ranking getting to the top of the search engines then?

Don’t abandon your dreams of online super-stardom. However, you might want to temper them a little.
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This might just be one of the oldest tricks in the SEO book. When search engines were ranking pages based on their keyword density it was a great way for site owners to give their pages a little artificial boost.

Unfortunately this mentality should have died out with AltaVista.

Sadly though people are still confusing the notion of creating keyword optimised content with blatant spamming and stuffing. But of course there are mixed signals coming from industry professionals like myself.
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As with any SEO advice, it is easy to get carried away when you hear about the potential benefits of internal links. By embedding a link within keyword you can direct visitors to the appropriate page and help to improve its relevance to that term. That’s got to be good, right?

Internal linking is essential for effective optimisation [see: How to Get More out of Internal Linking]. It helps pass around the link strength and offers fresh pathways to your pages. But it has to be kept within reason.

Let’s take an obvious example. You’re writing a category page and choose to mention a couple of popular products. In this instance it is logical that you would link to those product pages and use the name as the vehicle.
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