. Uhhhhh...what? I did? Show me where I said that. Off his meds again, I think. Again....uhhhhh, what? Again, show me where I said that. lol Oh, man, I'm sorry, but that one was just funny. Please, wizard of knowledge, stay coherent. .. I'm going back to staying on the subject of this thread.
that about sums it up. I remember the dark days of about 2003 when it became necessary to write what appeared to be absolute drivel just in order to get the keyword density up, which in those days actually WOULD make you rank. "Stock trading with options is a great way to make stock-trading profits because you leverage every stock trade so making stocktrading profits" as the opening line went. I kid you not, this stuff USED to work! As Kraven says, if you can keep it natural looking and still get your keywords in, you win both ways. Only proviso is that we are seeing the engines getting better at weeding out 'un-natural' stuff - that trend is only going to steepen, so even a mildly tweaked article this year may not do very well next year. Bottom line, read it out to yourself. If it sounds weird, it probably is.
I hope not to sound grumpy here (apologize if I did) .... but by natural I assumed PR meant it should be readable by humans rather than by bots. In fact, if you can write for the readers (using keywords and informing them), you dont even have to try to achieve a particular density you will get that automatically.
Live2Write your point is correct With a very good writer, keyword density does flow genuine because you use other forms of the keyword, synonyms, and close meanings to provide a good variety of choices to strengthen your article in a very readable format. An extremely skilled writer working the professional upper income market, however must prove additional results and higher performance, and simply does better structuring of the above. Therefore a $100,000 income is very conceivable. Now the average writer is a different story. In reviewing articles, I had a writer with the keyword kitchen, he used it 21 times in a 500 word article. The substitution of words such as kitchens, kitchenette, breakfast nook, and dining area, would have avoided the unintentional but deadly keyword spamming. In fact. Google did go back to more genuine sounding searches (the word a or the may now be a keyword in a phrase) which meant reversing its stand on stop words. This means buying steel hammer, and buying a steel hammer will often produce two different set of results. The mastery of word usage in becoming increasingly more important as Content Boss pointed out.
Couldn't agree more - nicely put if you don't mind me saying so. If you have trouble creating natural-sounding content, talk to dya. He doesn't charge, and his advice has helped many on this board. What he excels at is helping writers understand the principles. if you understand the principles, and are prepared to put in a little elbow grease, your writing will become valuable. Simple as that. And keywords etc will be in there naturally.
I have dozens of articles ranked at #1, 2 or 3 for their keywords and I don't give keyword density any thought at all. In a 500-word article, I use the keyword once in the title and twice in the body of the article. Any more than that sounds forced, and that turns off both readers and search engines. It's also important to deliver on the promise if your page title. If a reader finds a page titled "Signs of Kidney Disease," then your article better talk about the signs of kidney disease and not the causes or treatments of kidney disease. Using an obscure keyword might get you ranked quickly at first, but when readers start clicking away as soon as your page loads, you'll lose your ranking. Here's a good article on using natural (and you can write "naturally"; it simply means not forcing your keyword in where it doesn't belong and writing like you would speak to the reader) writing for SEO: http://www.seobook.com/archives/001668.shtml
Topcontent writer, you are using SEO, partially advanced. Like you said put in the the title. Now here is where people get thrown off, simply because of form layout. The title is completely different from the layout. So that means your next occurrence appears front at the context. Remember that Google shows usually 164 character spaces in describing your article. So it is wise to put in there. Next somewhere in the middle use it as a title description of a headline. However make in bold and underline it. In the last 2 sentences use it as a summary that will lead to the bio box. Now gain a little more Google credit and make yourself sound good. Let's say your keywords were "crazy girls gone wild". the bio box would start, Crazy Girls Gone Wild is a specialty topic of topcontentwriter. Now scatter the keywords, synonyms, and some PowerWords in the middle and you are 75% there. It also depends upon the topic and competition. I had a member here submit an article on payday loans, the best be got was a #4 out of 3,000,000 listings. All his competition had PR5 and higher. here is a minor league way of testing your quality, since you seem to have a fair amount of it. Google your word, or a variation of it, then check the first page. Lets say our Article directory EZA or ArticleBase has a Pr6, if all on the page have a PR2 or lower, you will probably get #1, if there are #3 you might get ahead of one of those if you listed to the title and content start. Pr4 and you have to be a all out pro. So if too many PR4, 5, then simply choose different keywords with a similar meaning, but not as frequently used. We write so we have 30 different combinations possible to hit the top, instead of 1 to 3. We go for 100%-----------take it or leave it------but you are giving keyword more thought than 50%, why not make it 75%, and not even change your style--------------------
This one should be stored, stickied and printed by all writers that encounter it. This little piece of info is literally gold in the right writer's hands. Folks bookmark it: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1864276&page=2#post14547888 you will want to come back here!
I definitely consider SEO in my writing; I just don't sit and think "I have to achieve a 5 percent keyword density." I use the meta title and description tags wisely. I also check the PR of the competition for potential keywords, as you recommended. I have found that I can usually rank well if the competitors have PR of 3 or lower. I've also been able to outrank sites with PR of 4 and 5, as well as really credible government sites (one of my health articles is actually ranked #1, while MedlinePlus, a National Institutes of Health site, is only ranked #4 for the same term).
Couldn't agree more with you. Your post convinces me of one more interesting point aside the SERP results- that the synonym kw phrases will not make the article look spammy and so helps retain focus of the readers. The best part- it doesn't take a genius to follow this. =) Thanks dyadvisor, I will save it in my journal.
For the 100th time, keyword density is not a usable metric. Nor has it been for years. It has nothing to do with SEO. Write copy for your visitors and call it a day. It is that simple. Nigel
5% is probably the most you will want to go. Though, when writing articles I don't really focus on keyword density. I just try to keep everything natural.
depends on which side of the fence you sit. If you're Google, and you come across an article with the word 'acne' at 25%, it's a very usable metric indeed. Agree with your way of saying 'keep it natural, though.
Nigel Lew How about a 500 word article challenge. $250.00 Loser pays proceeds to a third world country for starving kids donation? Otherwise for the 101st time, I will tell you that you have no realization of what a professional writer, using SEO and keywords, PowerWords (my term @1960), and synonyms can do.
Nigel Lew Keyword density or use of keywords is important in article writing. That is how the search engines find what you write. If you just jot down a bunch of words together about dog biscuits and you don't us the words in your title and the first sentence. Then chances are the search engines are not going to find you. Go to Google and type in dog biscuits and see what comes up. #1. GourmetSleuth - Dog Treats Recipes - Recipes for making dog biscuits and treats at home. Includes links to dog biscuit bakeries, books, and over 200 recipes. The top site in Google has dog biscuits mentioned twice in the description which is usually the first 169 characters in the article. Proper use of the keywords (keyword density) can mean the difference of the number 11th position and the number 1 position. Ranking in Google is not all about luck.