Last 3 words of first paragraph

anybody ever hear this

[graywolf]

My wife went to a seminar today where they had an SEO company give a presentation. One of the the things he mentioned was the first six words in the first paragraph are important (duh) as well as the last three words of the first paragraph. When questioned he said they had done extensive testing on over 50 sites to reach this conclusion.

Anyone ever hear this theory before?

[Robino]

Interesting. I've never heard that. I would like to see some examples.

Did you check this out for yourself?

[Bennie]

You'll find content often starts and ends with the main KW's and it is a factor.

[Livenomadic]

I've never heard this either, HOWEVER I do not believe it.

SEO is taking advantage of how search engines organize page content to help with rankings. The methods search engines use to organize page content are designed for NON-seo'd sites.

Let us now check out your own post (as an example of non-seo'd content):

My wife went to a seminar today where they had an SEO company give a presentation. One of the the things he mentioned was the first six words in the first paragraph are important (duh) as well as the last three words of the first paragraph. When questioned he said they had done extensive testing on over 50 sites to reach this conclusion.

Now lets take the first 6 words and the last 3:

My wife went to a seminar . . . reach this conclusion.

That really doesn't tell me ANYTHING about what the paragraph is about. The first 6 words are normally fluffly introductions "My wife went to a seminar" and the last 3 are fluffy closings "reach this conclusion", clearly no search engine could use this information to help rank the page.

[cabbie]

I quite often put the opening paragraph of my page as also the last paragraph.Usually in H1 tags.:)Blowed if I know why but have always done it as good copy.:)

[graywolf]

I quite often put the opening paragraph of my page as also the last paragraph. Usually in H1 tags

The whole paragraph .... hmm ... you using stylesheets to make them match the rest of the text?

[zammo]

With regards to content - I have also heard that it can be good to have the keyword mentioned in the first paragraph in bold and/or as a link.

Any evidence to suggest this. Also has anyone got any thoughts on the number of words to have in the first pg and overall body content? Also I have been noticing that sites that are using a h2 tag as opposed to h1 at the top cropping up a lot more? Any comments...

[cabbie]

>>The whole paragraph

Sorry,I exaggerate.The main phrase of the paragrah and no use of style sheets.

[httpwebwitch]

it sounds like a myth to me.

Even some SEO "experts" are fooled by these silly theories that get passed around. Many like to believe that the recipe for good SEO has an elusive secret ingredient - like, make the fourth word in your second paragraph rhyme with "hoop" and you will improve your SEO by an iota. I can neither prove nor disprove the assertion, but I don't buy it.

Unfortunately, lots of others do - literally. Some of these "web promotion" seminars are pretty expensive to attend. Like snake oil.

[ken_b]

So the first paragraph should only be 9 words long, if one wanted to fully take advantage of this idea?

I dunno, I get the impression sometimes that there are as many theories about seo/sem as the are seo/sem marketers.

[httpwebwitch]

There is a similar theory floating around that keywords placed before punctuation may have increased importance. That would mean bits at the end of sentences may be looked at favourably.

Untested, unproven, and probably insignificant compared with real SEO strategies like inbound links, content weight and dupe filter problems

[cnoonan]

I agree with Ken_B

In addition, I would like to know the name of the SEO company that ran the test and ask for a little more data.