Keyword style, density, and avoiding "spaminess"

keyword plurality and keyword spam

[StephenBauer]

I have read about keyword repetition to establish decent density (i.e. place in <title>, <h1>, <strong>, content, and <meta> (for some search engines)).

I have also read that five (?) times near each other could be interpreted as "spam" of that keyword. Now I understand this is geared toward something like "Blue Widgets, Widgets, Blue, Widget, Blue Widget, Widget, Widget" or something a little zany like that.

I have also read that plurality makes a difference in search engine results (i.e. "widget" is different than "widgets" in some search engines...and even in the same search engine, there seems to be ambiguity over the seperation of plurality).

My question is: How do you cover plurality without it looking like spam?

This just seems a bit wrong: "Blue Widgets, Blue Widget, Blue, Widgets, Widget" especially if it is in content itself (a little more acceptable if it is in the "title" or a "meta" tag).

Have any of you played around with this (and I am sure you have) to come up with a best practice scenario without causing your site harm?

Thanks in advance!

[mona]

Hi, StephenBauer and welcome to WebmasterWorld. I usually use a combination of both on one page, but sometimes I use two pages. I just target the phrase a little differnet to avoid dupe content. Say the phrase is Blue Widget(s). I'd make one page Fast Blue Widget and the other page Slow Blue Widgets. I'm sure there are many other ways to go about it.

[StephenBauer]

Thanks for the welcome.

I see your point about different types of blue widgets (i.e. fast, slow, premier) having their own pages and that makes sense.

What I was wondering about was more toward how people search for say just a "slow blue widget".

They could type any of these:
slow blue widget
slow blue widgets
slow widget
etc...

Do you optimize the page for both "widget" and "widgets" and risk "spaminess" of keywords?

That is a lessor example on a more specific set of keywords. Where my question really comes into play may be higher level (less detail) web pages where there are sub-categories and such. You may feature your "slow widget" categories (with a link each) but also feature a few of the "slow widgets" themselves on the page as well until the searcher gets to the more specific widget content. With these interim pages how should we optimize...let us consider the keywords "slow widget reviews":

The user then may search for:
slow widget review
slow widgets review
slow widgets reviewed
slow widgets reviews
slow widget information
widgets information
widget reviews
widgets reviewed
etc...

Many possible keywords would then be:
slow widget review, slow, widget, review, slow widgets reviewed, slow widgets, slow widget reviews, widgets reviewed, etc...

I should then try to work *some* of those into the <title> and content in a logical manner.

Should I spam the "keyword" <meta> tag with them as well (use all or just a few...how many is considered "spammy")? I know the meta tags aren't as important as they used to be, especially with big Google, but you may as well cover all your bases (without being classified as spam).

How much is too much?

Or should I even be worried about these interim pages?

[Rollo]

I wouldn't worry about keywords beyond what would come naturally, i.e. I wouldn't use a keyword any more on a website than in a college essay about the keyword.

Keyowrds in the title, outbound and internal links (and meta tags) etc... trying to stuff keywords won't do much good and could cause a lot of harm.

[mona]

StephenBauer - I think understand what you mean, I just did a poor job of explaining it;-) Let me try again.

Let's say the phrases you want to optimize for are "slow widget" and "slow widgets". If these phrases are not competitive, you can optimize for them of the same page. Rollo gave you some good ways to do this.

Now, if those two phrases are competitive, you'll want two separate pages for them. One way you can do this is to make one page for "slow widgets reviewed" and one for "slow widget information".

In both instances, the words "reviewed" and "information" are not words that you're really optimizing for. You're using these words sort of as an excuse to build more content.

Also, it's best not to get too hung up on a certain phrase or handful of phrases. If you look at your logs, you'll see people find your site using many words you never think of, and many phrases that will only ever be searched one or two times. So it's just as important to keep adding content to your site on a regular basis.

[StephenBauer]

Yeah, I think I have been overthinking this.