Elijah The Prophet

On June 27, 2007, I posted a message entitled Keyword Density is key to SEO and promised to revisit it in a month to see how well the message itself has done in the search engines. It has only been five days, and already my message is on the first page on the following Google search: - perfect keyword density for google -. I was looking at my histats log of search engine referrals and found that someone came to my site from that search. When I checked some of the other results on the first page, I found many erroneous ideas.

The top result sends you to a keyword density tool that purports to give you keyword density values for up to three keywords on an URL.

The keyword density tool is useful for helping webmasters and SEOs achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms.

Keyword density is important because search engines use this information to categorize a site’s theme, and to determine which terms the site is relevant to. The perfect keyword density will help achieve higher search engine positions. Keyword density needs to be balanced correctly (too low and you will not get the optimum benefit, too high and your page might get flagged for “keyword spamming”).

Already, the expert is giving poor advice. He is correct that the keywords help search engines categorize your site and move individual pages closer to the top results page. However, he errs by suggesting that the higher the density, the more likely your page would be under suspicion. Before I explain the problem with that logic, let us look at another page from that search, which attempts to define what keyword density is.

discountwebdesign says re:
Perfect SEO Keyword Density

Keyword density is the ratio of the number of occurrences of a particular keyword or phrase to the total number of words in a page. The total number of words does not include only the words in your title, description, or even in the body. But it also includes Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords, Visible Text, Alt Tags, Comment Tags, Domain Name, Image tags, Linked Text, Option Tags, and Reference Tags.

Keyword density is not constant for all Search engines. Simply every search engine algorithm differs, and for that you must choose an average keyword density that make your site rank in the top ten position in all search engines. If we make a research we will find that the best keyword density for Google is about 10%, Yahoo is about 20% and Msn is about 15%. Then you must make your site keyword density about 15% in order to get huge traffic to your site from those major search engines. It’s up to you, you may choose to optimize your site for just one of search engines, or to target all the major search engines.

We can see from these two pieces of expert advice that both authors believe the same false definition for keyword density. One believes that “too many” keywords leads to suspicion of spamming, the other believes that the percentage of density should be optimized somewhere around 15%. The problem is that keyword density is ill-defined in the SEO world. This problem originated with the so-called experts very early in the SEO industry and has brainwashed everyone since then.

Correct Definition of Keyword Density.

The percentage of hits that your keywords have when compared to the content in one page. The more keywords that are actually in the content, the higher the density, and the more relevant your page is to anyone searching for those terms. This definition is common sense. Next, you will want to look at the number of keyword hits compared to the content of your entire website. This measure reveals how efficient your website is in keeping to one theme. Search engines want to send their customers to sites that, not only have the search term on the page, but also have a site that is relevant to that page. Maybe we should coin a new SEO term: PAGE RELEVANCY.

Definition of Page Relevancy.

The number of multiple hits from the keywords on one page on your site, when searched for on all pages on your site. Here is a simple example. My site is about God and Jesus. If Jesus is a keyword on one page, then high page relevancy is determined by how many times the term Jesus is found over all the pages on my site. Would not the result be an indication of whether someone searching for Jesus would find Him on my site? (grin).

So this is page relevancy to site density.

If you follow the advice of the experts then you would be more likely to pick keywords that are not on your pages or even on your website! Their advice leads to NEGATIVE SEO.

The reason that my posting from FIVE DAYS ago has already appeared on the first page of a Google search on those terms is due to the high keyword density of my page, and my google pagerank of 4, and the overall efficiency of the keyword density of my overall site; even though my site is not focussed on this subject!

You see, SEO is an accumulative enterprise. Do not believe for a second that Google does not keep track of the click throughs when people search and select sites! This factor is why being on the first page of results is so coveted by SEO managers. The more times that people pick your site, the higher your Google rank will become, even if you site is not focussed on that particular search term. If the PAGE is relevant, and your site is ‘TIGHT’ then Google feels more confident sending customers there, since customers, in general, are already showing a propensity to pick your pages.

Website owners are also ignoring the intelligent AI of search engines. Google knows more about ‘related terms’ than we are giving them credit for. Look at this example of a Google patent:

Phrase-Based Searching in an Information Retrieval System (US20060031195)
An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases. Related phrases and phrase extensions are also identified. Phrases in a query are identified and used to retrieve and rank documents. Phrases are also used to cluster documents in the search results, create document descriptions, and eliminate duplicate documents from the serach results, and from the index.

Please notice the ‘predict the presence of other phrases’. Understand that, that algorithm KNOWS what to expect for related terms on a page. The robot also LEARNS what are related terms. Thus, for example, SMF and themes can be related to theme ‘names’. This one patent blurb taught me more about SEO than all the advice of the experts which I had to ignore. Let us look at my site’s theme, overall, by relevance.

http://heartdaughter.com

1. God and Jesus Christ
2. SMF
a. themes
b. portal
3. Wordpress
a. theme

The reason that pages from my website are consistently already on the first page of search results is due to the high keyword density of my entire site. Even the terms that are a minor focus are considered a better choice, than for a site whose sole focus is on the same term. The reason is that the ‘related terms’ have a high ratio, AND the related terms are more likely to be in my keyword list! The robot can combine all these factors and conclude that sending the customer to my site will result in him finding what he is looking for. And, that is actually true.

Look at the example of SMF themes. A new SMF sysop would come to my site and see many themes to demo with my theme changer. He would see a few themes to download on my download page. He would see some tips about themes on one of my forum boards. And he would be led to the SMF support forum throughout his travels on those pages on my site. So, Google is right. A person would find much to put him on the right track, on my site, when searching about SMF themes.

Notice that there are no gimmicks, cheating or spamming involved in this high keyword density method of SEO. I fully expect this strategy to take off in the next few months, as webmasters throw off all the nonsense they have been taught by the experts. The result will be good for the whole world. People will find what they are looking for in searches. Webmasters will CONNECT to the people who are interested in their content. Remember what I said in my first message: greed is not the motivation, but SERVICE is.

Content is not king. Someone, somewhere on the net is interested in the same things you have on your website. You want the search engines to know what you have, so those interested can find you. The most important aspect of SEO in relation to content is that your site has a theme that is consistent throughout. Yet! if you do have a page here or there on a totally different subject, then, that you properly identify its content with keywords that are found on that page.

I expect that programmers will get to work making utilities to help webmasters to train the program with keywords for each page and the entire site. These utilities will also reveal to the webmasters what their own site is all about. The SEO companies that offer this service will rise to the top, because their results will be provable. Link exchange will change to choosing whose link to put on your own site, according to relevancy to your own site’s content. Communities will develop; matrices, and web rings. Forums and Blogs should become more popular. Targeted ads and adsense etc. should evolve into something else; something motivated by service and not greed. The playing field will be leveled as more sites will be efficient, the ads will have to correlate MORE STRONGLY to page or site content.

www.blogskinny.com just offered me free ads for my site. This new offering will not help me because my site is about God and Jesus. I tried a keyword of Elijah and the ad wanted to sell my visitors big screen televisions! Such poor correlations will fall to the wayside. I am not faulting blogskinny. As sites become more efficient, advertisers will want to target those sites which indicate that their customer base would have interest in their product. Again, the desire to serve leads to the right strategy.

I have more to write about SEO management. Let us wait five more days and we will come back and revisit this subject.

ladynada
aka Me114