WordCamp Dallas 2008: Chris Smith on SEO for Bloggers
May 13th, 2008
WordCamp Dallas 2008: Chris Smith on SEO for Bloggers
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Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Optimization’
The Importance of The Keywords Density
May 7th, 2008
Keyword density and positioning are important areas of search engine optimization. The search engine spiders will scan a page with certain algorithms to determine what the topic of the article, report, or white paper is referring to.
This is basically done by totaling up all the nouns and pronouns, picking the most used and classifying the relevancy of the article. This is how they determine the “keyword” that your article is written about. The search engines then place this keyword relevant article in the results pages of that particular Search Engine.
Why Keywords?
Your keyword should be placed a few times in random areas of the body text of your articles. This usually occurs without effor twhen you write about a specific subject.
You will want to mention the subject at least one time perparagraph thus defining the relative keyword for the article, report or white paper. Without mentioning the keyword enough times, the search engines will not be able to determine what the article is written about.
Over Doing The Keyword Thing
It is very important not to over do the keyword to the point that the written article sounds stupid. The term “keyword stuffing” is when someone purposely overloads their article with the same keyword, trying to get a higher search engine rank because of relevancy.
It’s pretty obvious when stuffing is going on, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice it and the search engines spot it right off. When the SE’s determine that you have stuffed your article, they will de-list the article and possibly blacklist the rest of your site as well.
If it looks like the keyword is in your article to many times, try to come up with synonyms for it to make the page flow better without repeating the word.
Keyword Density, How Does It Work?
Keyword density is the times your word is presented in your article, report or white papers. Most people try to use a % to figure out just how often they put a keyword in each article.
An example would be if you had a 400 word article or report and want to obtain a keyword density of 4%, you would want to have the word on your page exactly 16 times. Or basically 4 times in each of the 4 paragraphs. There are many ways, including software that will show you the keyword density of an article and there is no perfect number.
It depends on what works for you and what gets you the better rankings for your articles. Every webmaster has their own density they prefer to achieve due to past results.
What Is The Best Density?
Typically we try to achieve around 3%, sometimes more, sometimesless, just depends on the article or report. Sometimes it’s hard to get 3-4% when writing white papers and specialized magazine articles. Don’t worry about it, the SE’s programs are smart enough to tell what an article is written about with the use of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). LSI in a nutshell is related keywords.
The keyword “article” has LSI of: Paper, essay, report, magazin earticle, white papers and the plural of the words also. (see I was able to “stuff” a little just by mentioning this!). It is important to structure your keywords in your articles to have an hourglass shape to it. In other words, more in the first and last paragraphs than in the middle.
Typically when someone is describing a subject, they will speak about the item right off, then go into specifics, then give a conclusion about the subject. Thus giving the hourglass effect of your keywords in the article.
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Search Engine Optimization - What Is It?
May 4th, 2008
Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process.
The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine.
New sites need not be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.
If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.
Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.
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