Checking Keyword Density in Your Content

If you search for a keyword density tool online a number of options will come up, but most keyword density tools require you to enter the URL of the webpage you’re checking for keywords. But what if you want to check your keywords before you post the content on your website? To find the keyword density of each keyword, simply add up the number of times the keyword appears in the content and divide it by the total number of words on the page.

Always check the keyword density of individual keywords against the page of content as opposed to the density of all the keywords cumulatively. So if you were writing a page of web site content for “red shoes,” “red sparkly shoes,” and “red women’s shoes,” you would check the keyword density of “red shoes,” then the keyword density of “red sparkly shoes,” etc.

Singular Keywords vs. Plural Keywords

Many SEO copywriters do not differentiate between plural and singular keywords. So they might go back and forth between “red shoes” and “red shoe” when the keyword they are optimizing for is “red shoes.” Not a big deal, right? However, if you Google the two terms totally different results come up for the singular and plural versions. For that reason, you should always be very careful to keep singular keywords singular and plural keywords plural. And when you check the keywords’ density, check “red shoes” separately from “red shoe.”

Using Stop Words within Keyword Phrases

Stop words are words that search engines generally do not acknowledge when doing searches, such as “in,” “a,” “as,” “of,” “the,” etc. They can be a real lifesaver when dealing with especially difficult terms to smoothly work into content. For instance, let’s say you decided to go for some long-tail keyword terms like “red sequin shoes women.” Writing “red sequin shoes women” exactly within the content sounds awkward, so you could put a stop word in there, like “red sequin shoes for women.” It makes your job a lot easier, but when possible always try to use the exact phrase, because if someone is searching for the exact phrase within quotation marks different results will come up.

Symbols and Punctuation in Keywords

Conversely, punctuation and symbols can be interspersed within keyword phrases and they shouldn’t affect the keyword density whatever way the phrase is searched for. So let’s say you decided to offer financing for your red shoes (they’re designer), and you want to write some SEO copy about your 0% financing offer. Whether you searched for “0% financing” or “0 financing” – with quotations or without – the same results show up in Google.

Creating Your SEO Content

MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Search Marketing – SEO Edition Benchmark Report recently cited the marketers they interviewed as rating content creation the most difficult (yet most effective) SEO tactic. Between web content, optimized press releases, articles, and regular blog posts, it can all seem incredibly overwhelming without even taking keywords or keyword density into account. But any content on your site is better than none, and if you are knowledgeable about your industry, keywords will naturally show up in your content. SEO Inc. also offers a wide variety of SEO copywriting services to round out social media and internet marketing campaigns.

Have you tried any of these SEO copywriting techniques? Comment below!

1. Keywords:

You’re trying to rank for certain keywords, right? That’s the whole reason you’ve gotten into search engine optimization in the first. So you need to put these keywords in your content. Each of your SEO content pages should be themed around similar keywords. Don’t try to optimize a page for more than 4 or 5 keywords. It’s nearly impossible to accurately optimize or write content for more keywords and still retain the value of the page. The goal should be narrow, targeted pages with very relevant content.

Your SEO content should be 100% relevant to the keywords and, most importantly, be useful to visitors. Writing filler text with keywords interspersed throughout doesn’t provide value to a visitor and will most likely not increase page views or sales. Trickery also places you in a gray area with search engines and doesn’t provide long-term rankings.

While everyone seems to have an opinion of what kind of keyword density (KWD) your SEO content should have, the general consensus is between 3-5 percent. Any more than 5 percent, and search engines will not only see it as spam, but it will seem spammy and keyword stuffed to any regular person just reading it.

To figure out the KWD of a page, divide the total number of keywords used per phrase by the total number of words in the content. KWD is determined per keyword, not for all keywords at once.

Example: If your keyword was “shoes” and you used it 10 times in a 300 word page of content, you would divide 10/300 = 3.33% KWD. If your keyword phrase was “clown shoes” and you used it 6 times in a 300 word page of content, you would divide 12/300 = 4% KWD.

2. Cross Linking:

While each SEO content page is themed to its own keywords, it’s important to maintain an overall theme between all the pages. The main keywords of other pages on your site need to be included in each page to enable cross linking. For a smaller site with five pages this is easy. Just include the main keywords of each page in each of the other pages, and link each keyword to its respective page. For a larger site with 20 or more pages, you may need to divide the pages up and link them to each other in smaller groups (you don’t want 20+ in content links on one page).

For instance, if you had a clothing and shoes website, you could link all the boots themed SEO content pages to each other, link all the dress themed pages to each other, link all the pants themed pages to each other, and link each page back to the homepage.

3. Formatting:

Studies show that most Internet consumers scan a web page for information relevant to their interests and if they don’t find the information they’re looking for within the first couple of minutes, they will leave the website. I’m definitely guilty of this one, and you probably are too. If I get to a page and I see just one big block of text, there’s about a 99 percent chance that I will leave the page before I have read all (or sometimes any) of the text. Some SEO copywriting techniques to break up text and help readers find what they’re looking for include:

• Bulleted lists
• Numbered lists
• Headlines
• Sub-headlines
• Bolded words
• Blocking off or centering important chunks of text

4. Call to Action:

You don’t want to leave the reader with nothing to do at the end of the page. They have read your information, statistics and/or sales pitch, so what should they do now? Whether it is a toll-free number to call, a link to a contact page, or a link to more information, your SEO copywriting should always include some sort of call to action at the end. Create a sense of urgency with words like “now,” “today,” etc. For example: “Call us now to get the best clown shoes today!”

5. Spelling and Grammar:

I can’t emphasize this enough: always check your work after you are done. Spell check is not always accurate. Sometimes it will change words automatically and you won’t notice that it’s the wrong word. Sometimes you can use the wrong form of a word and not realize it until later (i.e. their vs. there vs. they’re). If I’m writing a bunch of pages of SEO content, I wait until it’s all finished and then check it with fresh eyes a few hours later or the next day. If you don’t trust your own eyes, have a friend or co-worker look it over for you.

These five tips are just a start to great SEO copywriting. What are your tricks for writing SEO content?

Is your SEO Confusing Users?

Mike Moran posted an article on Search Engine Guide today discussing a common folly in perspective regarding SEO, that being, optimizing a web page for search engines opposed to customer interaction. While this is clearly an issue which can arise in SEO, in this post I would like to comment on a sister subject, the tug of war that can occur between search engine optimization and website usability.

When you are optimizing a site for search, the search marketer on the job is often enticed to pull out all the stops. I mean let’s face it, search engine optimization is competitive and a few keywords in the right place can sometimes make a big difference. But one very important item to keep in mind is usability. If the implementation of your SEO practices is at all misleading, and causes the usability of the site to diminish, then people will bounce from your pages and your conversions will most likely go down. Also, eventually your rankings will slip.

In SEO, just like in life, honesty is the best policy. If you try to cut corners by not thoroughly thinking through an SEO strategy that makes sense for both the website users and the search engines, your site will suffer. This is really what Mike Morgan is hinting at in his post. Take a look at this excerpt below:

In my talk Friday, I posed a list of things to do for improving your search marketing campaign:

• Discovering the most popular keywords.
• Using those keywords in your copy.
• Conducting link campaigns to get links to your pages.

That’s not terribly controversial advice, but suppose you had a somewhat different list:

• Discover what your customers want.
• Provide the information they need.
• Create information so useful that other sites link to your pages.

Ultimately, both of these perspectives need to be considered in every SEO strategy. You must have keywords in the right places, you must engage in some type of link building, and you have to optimize your site with best practices. But without considering what your customers want, giving them the information they need, and making sticky, popular pages, your site will never reach greatness.

Now this is nothing new for search engine optimization. People have been saying, “Content is King” for a long time. But in today’s online space it’s becoming even more important.

Matt Cutts, the head of web spam at Google, perhaps put it best in his recent video blog. To summarize, his main point was create amazing content while using best SEO practices and get that content exposure through all your means. Cutts’ comments hit home for me. If you create something worthwhile online it will get the credit it deserves. But you have to optimize it and promote it properly otherwise it may never be discovered. And when you do your optimization, make sure it’s done it a way that makes sense for your site and your customer first, then refine it for the search engines.

Anyone who knows at least a little about SEO knows the “old” adage: “Content is King” (in the Internet world anything over 10 years = old). Basically, quality content will get your site more recognition from search engines and users. But what if you live with Bizarro Superman, Wonderzarro, Bizarro Flash, The Yellow Lantern and Batzarro the world’s worst detective (my personal favorite) on Htrae, and you DON’T want your website to get traffic?

The answer is simple. In Bizarro World you would write bad SEO content. Here are the top 5 rules in the Bizarro Code for writing bad SEO content:

5. Use as many different keywords as possible.

On Earth SEO writers only use 3-5 keywords or keyword terms per page of content. But on Htrae they use as many different keywords as possible on one page. This will confuse and overwhelm search engines, making them less likely to attribute any of your web pages to one particular keyword.

4. Don’t use any keywords.

On the other end of the spectrum, you could write a lot of content for your website, but make sure to put no keywords pertaining to your product or services in it. This will let the search engines as well as visitors to your site (if you have any) know that you are in no way an expert on what you’re selling.

3. Make all your content into images.

Do you find that your content is just too good? No matter what you do, you find that you’re naturally incorporating keywords in a way that’s actually readable? Just make all of your content into an image as demonstrated in Bizarro SEO: 5 Sure-Fire Ways to Not Rank in the Search Engines. Sure, visitors to your site will still be able to read it, but search engines will have no way to know what it says. The problem of your good content is solved.

2. Use the same keyword repeatedly.

When I say use the same keyword repeatedly…I mean A LOT. By just repeating your main keyword over and over and over and over (AKA keyword stuffing) you’ll be letting search engines know that you have no readable, sensible content. And although Bizarro inhabitants generally hate multi-tasking, keyword stuffing your content can also help you with the Bizarro goal of getting your website banned (see Bizarro SEO: The 5 best ways to get banned).

1. Write no content at all.

If you’re more of a passive Bizarro, a Bizarro Gandhi if you will (or would Bizarro Gandhi be violent?), you can simply write no content at all. Leaving your website completely devoid of content will almost guarantee that the search engines will ignore it entirely.

Just follow these 5 rules for writing bad SEO content, and you’ll fit right in with the Bizarro crowd in no time.

However, just like eating all your Halloween candy in one night, how you manage your domains can end up hurting too. At face value, gathering domains in order to protect your brand, slogan, executives, and variations of your domain is a smart move.

However, pointing these domains to your website in an attempt to improve your website rankings, to improve your link popularity, or to generate additional traffic can be a dangerous move.

Let’s look at an example. (Shout out to my favorite candy: I love you M&Ms!)

Mars Inc. is currently using at least two domains to represent the M&M brand: www.mms.com and www.m-ms.com. When you type in each of these URLs, you’ll see the same website and the address bar will continue to show the URL that you entered. This approach creates two identical websites (aka: duplicate content) and, for the many content rich websites out there, this can result in being penalized by the search engines.

What’s the best solution? A 301 Permanent Redirect or simply park the websites

By permanently redirecting the domains to a canonical version, you will avoid creating duplicate content and continue to direct visitors to your main website. To see a 301 Redirect in action: Type in the www.SEOIncorporated.com URL. The www.SEOIncorporated.com URL will automatically be redirected and http://www.seoinc.com/ will appear in the address bar.

Coming Soon: Top Types of Domains to Buy
Next Blog Post: Social Competitive Analysis

What I tell these clients is that search engine optimized press releases are one of the quickest and easiest ways to start generating more backlinks, higher keyword rankings, visibility and traffic for your website.

And here’s why:

Backlinks:

A properly optimized SEO press release will include your top keywords as well as links to your website. Once the SEO press release is distributed, it can get picked up by a wide range of news search engines, related web sites and channels including major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! Each time your press release gets picked up, it is reproduced on that site along with all of your keywords and links. This generates a good amount of quality backlinks to your site that will increase the page rank and link popularity of your website (especially when the backlinks are from news sites with high page ranks of their own).

Online news search queries are generally more targeted than standard web searches. In other words, people searching for news related to your industry are more likely to search for the terms that are used in your press release, which gives you a better chance at increasing the ranking of your website for popular and competitive search terms.

More Visibility:

When your press release is distributed, it will be linked very quickly (news stories are more time sensitive), giving you early visibility on news sites, news searches and standard search engines. Many news web sites also archive stories which can help to deliver long term link value, rankings and visibility.

Increased Traffic to Your Website:

The more information you show that you know, the more trustworthy you become; well written content will always add credibility to your website. When your press releases start appearing in Google news and Yahoo! news for your keywords, potential customers searching for your product or business will see that you are a credible source of information in your industry and that you can be trusted. Prospects with Google alerts for your keywords will automatically receive your press release in their inbox, which will generate additional interest and relevant traffic to your site as well.

SEO press releases can be a valuable addition to any SEO campaign, no matter what your industry. When you have something newsworthy to say, whether it’s the launch of a new product, a new partnership or anything else, why not take advantage of the benefits that an optimized press release can bring to your site?