Have you ever talked with someone who uses a specific word or phrase way too much?
Like SEO is like really important. It’s like so much like…
No one really talks like this…I hope. When you’re listening to someone that does this kind of thing, anytime they use their repeated word or phrase it almost feels amplified to you because of its over use. You stop paying attention to their point and instead sit with anticipation for its next iteration.
This is what its like for users reading website content that has over emphasized keyword density. MAYBE you’re helping your search engine ranking slightly. But what are you losing? Gaining slight ranking at the expense of readability and interest is not doing anyone any favors. It’s very obvious when pages like this are consumed and people will feel cheated.
Keyword Density, for those who don’t know, is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. If you are trying to receive visitors on your site who search for “Affordable Hotel Rooms” then search engine optimization specialists will interject that exact key phrase into the headers and copy of the page to increase the keyword density to make the page that much more relevant from a search engine point of view. A typical example of this methodology is as follows:
- Title: Clean and Affordable Hotel Rooms in Southern California
- Tag-line: Looking for Affordable Hotel Rooms? Your in the right place!
- Header: Affordable Hotel Rooms with all the amenities.
- Page Text: Use “Affordable Hotel Rooms” as much as possible.
Search Engine Optimization is a very important part of marketing a website. Aligning page titles, meta tags, headers and the actual copy of a web page is a tried and true method for increasing visibility. This is what everyone wants right? Of course everyone wants more visitors to their website.
The knowledge of seo methods tend to shift peoples focus from wanting to provide their users with the best possible experience to crafting web pages that are attractive to the search engines. It starts to feel like the more you put into optimizing your website the more you need to bastardize your content. What is the point of having great content if no one will be there to read it? But you need to also ask what the point is of having people on your site if there is nothing with substance to digest? As with anything in life, we need balance.
My suggestion and what I practice is to write content that will be helpful and informative with a PERSON in mind. If the person that you are writing for is someone who wants to learn more about what you are writing and the keywords and key-phrases that this person would use in asking questions about the topic can be used…then use them. Just not so much that it becomes a distraction. Write your copy free of keyword influences. Then go back through your work to see where it would make sense to use your keywords and make sure it’s appropriate for the reader.
The point to remember when working on keyword density is that your target audience is not the search engines. Create content for your potential customers or your loyal readers. It’s good to make sure you do what you can with search engine optimization and keyword density, but it needs to be tasteful. If you’re creating a page that doesn’t flow correctly then all the SEO in the world isn’t going to get you a conversion.
Check out my Search Engine Optimization Services or contact me now to talk about this more.