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I am doing some optimization on my site.
Hope you can see if what I am doing is legit.
I have a keyword say 'X' and it appears 25 times in my 995 word description - giving it a 3% density. Using a seo tool, it says that anything more than 3% is considered spam. But I am just at 3%.
Just want to be very sure that I will not be penalised by Google or any other search engines as I have pretty good rankings now.
Let's back up a bit. When you say "995 word description," are you talking about the meta description tag in the head? If so, I'd pare that down by about 975 or so words.
Most major search engines don't give much credit to the meta description tag, keep it short and sweet. I rarely write descriptions longer than 15 words, basically because I just get bored, but they seem to work. Include each of your primary keyword phrases and supporting secondary keywords once and you should be okay.
Now, if you're talking about a site description "page" that's 995 words, 3% density might be considered on the low end; you should be able to work it up to 6 or 8% without any problem, possibly higher depending on your site's niche.
Here's some good reading:
Brett's Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com]
Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don't fret about it).
(Extract)"Here's some good reading:
Brett's Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone "
...I did read and thought it was very good advice.
However I don't really understand this sentence below.
(extract)Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don't fret about it).
...What does the italic and bold do to the ranking?
Thanks for the tips so far.
I am targeting more than 8 keywords in my main page, having about 8 X 3% is 24%. That means 1 in every four words is a keyword.
Look at it this way, no search engine really knows what your keywords are. In your case I have the feeling you might be targeting two or three different keyword phrases on your main page and are adding the densities together ("Buy Red Widgets" + "Rent Blue Widgets" + "Widget Making History").
If that's the case, don't worry about it, and actually don't worry about making the main page rank well for all the keyword phrases. Use the main page to support separate pages, each optimized for a specifice keyword phrase. Go from the general to the somewhat specific, then down to the very specific -- that's where you pick up most of your organic SE traffic.
If you haven't already, here you'll want to read Search Engine Theme Pyramids [searchengineworld.com]:
"It may be a shock to some, but the index page has very little SEO rankings value."
You can always do a simple one-page "Buy This!" site where the above doesn't apply. However, once you have more than one product, service, category, whatever, it's always best to build specific, targeted sub-sections and pages, depending on how much detail you have to get into.
...What does the italic and bold do to the ranking?
This is basically one way of actually telling an SE what words on a page you, at least, consider to be important. Some -- not much -- weight is given to bold and italic in some SE algorithms.
Of course, the best way to tell an SE what your page might be about is LINKS. If an SE sees a link on a page for "Widget Making History," it considers that a good indication that the page is somewhat, kind of, might be related to that.
Well, time to go out and play for awhile. Do your reading, pay attention to the basics. Build the solid foundation first and then tweak as you start start to see it work.
Thanks for your help.
Really appreciate you pointing out those articles.
Really gems. Also will take heed on your advice and work hard.
I have certain product pages where I use the manufacturer's name and then the product they make. Let's say, Acme widgets.
On most pages, the word "Acme" is at around 12%, and "widgets" is about the same. On some pages I created today, though, "Acme" is at 20.8%.
Is that getting too spammy?
There are pages that will naturally have the same words repeated many times
The key word here being naturally.
If "Acme" is at 20.8% and the copy reads well, then there's no reason to worry. On the other hand, if you're simply plugging "Acme" into every conceivable spot you can, then, while maybe not tripping flags at the SEs, you might just chase visitors away because of poor, awkwardly phrased copy.
Is that spamming, or just natural item descriptions?
[/Joe Pesci voice]
hulahoop,
Spiders look at kw density on every page.
