Writing Keyword Rich Copy
Search engine spiders are looking for pages that are relative
to a search phrase, so they like to see phrases repeated within
the copy of that page. Pages that are heavy on graphics and
low on text make it very hard for spiders to determine whether
or not a site is relevant for a keyword. Spiders need text
to make that judgment.
For this reason, it is suggested that each page contain an
absolute minimum of 250-300 words of keyword dense copy. (Keep
in mind that this copy not only benefits your search engine
rankings, it also provides your prospective customer with
plenty of insight into your products and services, thus helping
to convert sales.)
You might be wondering what "keyword dense" copy
is. Search engines aren't able to process words and information
in the same manner that humans are, so they do the best they
can. In determining the rank of particular pages, search engine
spiders scan through the text on your site and process how
often certain keyword phrases show up. The ratio of keywords
to total copy is known as "keyword density."
To give a further understanding of how keyword rich copy
works, let's look at how a search engine will read the text
on a page. Let's say someone has searched for "red marbles."
When a search engine looks at a page to find a match for "red
marbles" they are basically seeing the text like this:
text text text red marbles text text text text text text
red marbles text text text text text text text text text text
text text text red marbles text text text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text text text text
text text text
Above, they see three occurances of "red marbles"
out of 50 words. That's a decent keyword density and it makes
them think that there's a good chance your page has good information
on red marbles.
Now, let's say you also want to optimize that page for rubber
balls.
text text text red marbles text text text rubber balls text
red marbles text text text rubber balls text text text text
text text text text red marbles text text text text text text
text rubber balls text text text text text text text text
text text text text text
You'll see that now we've got rubber balls showing up three
times and red marbles showing up three times in 50 words.
There's still enough "text" words in there to make
the page sound ok, so this will work.
But, if you decide you want to add a third phrase, say, jump
rope...then we get...
jump rope text red marbles text text text rubber balls text
red marbles text text text rubber balls text text text text
text text text text red marbles text text text text jump rope
text rubber balls text text text text text text text text
jump rope text text text
Now we're starting to run out of "text" words because
we have so many keywords in there. Plus, you are now telling
the search engine that red marbles, rubber balls and jump
ropes are ALL important on your web site. But the search engine
doesn't know which one is MOST important, so it starts to
assume that they are all just a little bit important. After
all, if one of them was more important than the other, it
would show up more often, right? In other words, the more
keyword phrases that you try to fit into a page, the lower
your keyword density and the less successful your optimization
efforts.
Now, you may be wondering how a search engine "knows"
what words on your page are keywords or keyword phrases. The
answer is: they don't. Search engines have no idea what a
red rubber ball is. They don't care. They are simply matching
up words that people are typing in as queries. You could optimize
your site for "xlkjwef" and if someone searched
for that, your page would come up. In other words, every single
word on your page MIGHT be a keyword, a search engine has
no idea. It only knows that word X shows up as 8% of the content
on your page, so it must be important. When a searcher comes
and looks for word X, the engine will remember that your site
is about that.
Copywriters should aim for a keyword density of 3-6% for
each keyword phrase on a page. Although it might be tempting
to think that you can't have too much of a good thing, it's
important to avoid the temptation of "stuffing"
extra words onto the page to increase your density. The search
engines have spent years adjusting their computers to "catch"
web sites that try to fool their way into earning high rankings.
An unusually high keyword density is likely to get you flagged
as a "spammer" and may cause your site to incur
some ranking penalties.
A good rule of thumb is to read the copy out loud. If it
sounds like you've forced the use of your keywords just to
fit them in, chances are good that the copy needs some more
work.
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