All Entries Tagged With: "keyword density"

Article Key Phrase Optimization

I have to review a lot of articles that are submitted to my article directory and those that writers send me as samples of their work. Those applying for a job as a writer want to impress me with their ability to optimize the sample article I give them for the key phrase I assign.

In doing so they send me a sample where every sentence begins with the key phrase. Or one sentence ends with the key phrase and the next sentence begins with the same key phrase.

There are a lot of webmasters buying this type of content on the web. They think that the number of times the key phrase is in the article is way more important than the actual content and the article’s readability.

Because these webmasters BELIEVE they know about seo and article marketing, they request this keyword density as if it is the most important thing.

Then writers that are new to the web and who want to please their customers do as they have been asked to do. After all the customer is paying for it. So give them what they want right?

Wrong. I may be a total pain in the #%$, but my clients know that when they request something and I don’t agree with it because I know it won’t help them, I speak up and let them know how they could benefit more by doing it a different way.

Being a yes-man is not what these clients need. They need someone who spends time to learn what does or does not work and who will advise them on the best approach to seo or article marketing.

Write the article for the reader first and SEO second. you will find that you will naturally include that key phrase where it is appropriate to do so. Read it over after you finish and see if there is a spot or two where you could have added the key phrase without the article being spammy to the reader.

It can be done. Our writers do it all the time for our clients. You can too.

Article Optimization Is Not About Keyword Density

This article is worth publishing for one reason only:

The author doesn’t encourage you to count your keywords.

Affiliate Marketing Articles – 4 Tips to Success

By Bryan Supe

Article marketing has become very popular and it is also known as “bum marketing”. Tons of affiliates use articles to promote products but very few know exactly how to get this to work properly. This article will show you the necessary steps you need to be successful with article marketing.

1. Use targeted keywords

You must do your keyword research in order to know what to write about. If your article does not include keywords that people actually use then you will never get anyone to read your article.

This seems obvious, but for example, if you are promoting an ebook that is about weight loss then you want to include this in the title of your article and in the article as well. Make sure to do your keyword research to find out which keywords are worth writing articles for.

2. Keyword density

Don’t overdo it. Don’t just repeat your keyword several times in your article, make sure your article reads naturally. If you use the keyword too often then the search engines will see it as spam and never give you any visitors.

3. Content

You need to keep the attention of your readers. Don’t bore them. A good piece of advice is to use lists. See how I have it “4 Tips To Success”. This will often attract people to click your article.

It takes some practice, but you need to leave your readers wanting more. Offer them a tip in the article that is useful and they will want to read more.

4. Resource box – vital

This is so important. Make sure you have a resource box that gives a link to your website or capture page for more information. You want them to click on your link so you need to entice them to do so.

People have been raving about this free report on affiliate marketing.

For a limited time, you can download this FREE report “Secrets of Affiliate Marketing” which reveals amazing online marketing strategies you can use to make huge profits.

Also, check out Bryan’s Online Marketing Blog for the latest tips and tricks about making money online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bryan_Supe

Too many people are passing off inaccurate information about article marketing, but this article nails it on the head. To be most effective, you should use targeted keywords and just focus on writing useful, valuable content. Don’t count keywords. Keyword density is not that important. You want enough keywords to let the search engine know what the article is about and you want it optimize enough that it will rank, but understanding that optimization isn’t about how many keywords you have. Rather, it is about where your keywords are placed and how valuable your content is.

If you want highly optimized keywords with valuable content that attract readers to your website – targeted traffic – then check out Article Content Provider today.

Focusing On Keyword Density Won’t Produce
Good Articles

Some folks are still under the false impression that keyword density is important. It’s not and it never has been.

The Definition Of Keyword Density
Keyword density is defined as the percentage of targeted keywords to your total number of words in content. So if your targeted keyword is “bacon bits” and you write a 1,000-word article using the targeted keyword 20 times, your keyword density will be 2%. Many gurus say the optimal keyword density is somewhere between 1% and 7%, the optimal varying depending on which guru you speak to, but 1% is the low and 7% is the high end of the advice given.

There are several problems with this approach to article writing:

• No. 1, if you write naturally then any well-written article will fall within that range of keyword use
• The focus on keywords seems wise because search engines rank pages for keywords
• Note that search engines rank pages for keywords, not according to keywords – not a semantic delineation
• Search engines give weight to a number of factors on a page and off-page and the weight given to each of the factors is different and could fluctuate from one day, week, or month to the next
• No one knows the weight given to all the factors on any given day

In short, search engine ranking factors are a mystery. No one knows what they are completely. We can guess what they are based on past experience, but since the search engines are always changing their ranking algorithms we can never fully know the complete picture.

On ranking pages for keywords vs. according to them, when you type “bacon bits” into the search field at your favorite search engine and get a list of web pages for that keyword, you will likely get results that are close, somewhat close, and not even close to what you are looking for. Even a web page about interstellar space travel could show up on the results page if the keyword is used on the page. Inbound link anchor text is as important a ranking factor as actual keyword usage and all you have to do is Google “About Us” to see this in action.

Click on the search results for PCWorld’s About Us page. There are 279 words in the body content of that page. Exactly 0 of those words are the phrase “about us”, yet the result is the fourth from the top on the Google search results page. If I use the browser find function for the phrase then I’ll find only one usage of that phrase on the page and it’s on the bottom menu bar, which means it will appear on every page of the PCWorld website. This page’s keyword density is – drumroll – 0. Pretty important, huh?

So How Does Keyword Density Apply To Article Marketing?
So how does this relate to articles that likely won’t appear on your own website. First, you have to understand the goal and importance of article marketing. The goal is to promote your website, building inbound links, and drive traffic to your site. You are not building on-page SEO benefits. Furthermore, your link building benefits do not exist within the article itself, but in the author resource box at the end of the article. This is where you’ll put your inbound links.

Let’s assume you write a bang-up author resource box with one good anchor text link to the page that you want to benefit. Does that mean the rest of your article is not important? No, not all.

You want your article to be well-written and reader-friendly. That is, you want readers to be able to get some benefit out of it. Otherwise, it’s a pretty useless article. It can be SEOd to the hilt and have perfect keyword density, but if readers within your niche don’t find the article of any value then it’s a perfectly useless article. The article, above all, must have value. Even an article with sub-optimal keyword density can drive traffic to your website and build you solid inbound links if it provides real value to readers within your niche.

Any article that is deemed a quality article by e-zine publishers, bloggers, and webmasters within your niche may be used by them. Every time a publisher uses your article you’ll get a new inbound link. If your article is SEOd well then the publisher will get the benefits of on-page SEO. You, however, as the writer, will get the benefit of off-page SEO. Neither on-page nor off-page SEO is more important; they must work together to achieve the same benefit for your website. Obviously, on-page SEO must come first or any off-page SEO you strive for will be in vain. Article marketing uses the age-old principle: Help yourself by helping others first.

That said, you should write articles that provide publishers with the best on-page SEO benefits as possible. If you do that then they’ll use more of your articles. You’ll get more links to your website, their readers will get the benefit of your knowledge, and the publishers will get the benefit of highly optimized web content. But what does that mean?

What Highly Optimized Article Content Means
Remember those ranking factors? You aren’t trying to build inbound links to your articles so forget about link building for a moment. A highly optimized article is good “on-page” SEO. That means keywords are important – very important – but not the most important thing. You also need to think about your article title – which is critically more important than keyword density – as well as subheadings within the article, ordered and unordered lists, and font characteristics (bold, italics, etc.).

You don’t want to bold or italicize your keywords just for the sake of adding characteristics that you think the search engines will love. You want to do so when it’s important to the reader. For instance, I like to bold the first sentence of long bullet points in my lists. Or, if I list bullet points followed by an explanation of each point, I like to bold the list item before the explanation to make it stand out to the reader more. While doing that I like to see if I can squeeze a keyword into a couple of those bullet points. Just a strategy that I’ve found that works.

Bottom line: Keyword density is a fake panacea for article optimization illnesses. It is infinitely more important to write an article that is beneficial to the reader, but while doing that it is important to look for ways that you can increase your on-page (ie. internal article) SEO. Density is a small measure for that goal and one that won’t give an accurate telling.