How Many Keywords Do You Need?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 27 of October , 2008 at 8:11 am

Keyword density is a term you’ll hear a lot when it comes to learning how to do on-site SEO. Honestly, too much is made of it and I’ll tell you why. SEO is not about how many times you can stuff a keyword into your content. It IS about how well you let your human visitors and the search engines know what your site, and each page on your site, is all about.

The search engines analyze over 150 different criteria when they determine page rankings in their SERPs. Each criteria has its own weightiness in the algorithms used to rank pages. For instance, keyword usage is just one criteria. It may have more weight than something like alt tags, but a bit less weight than, say, an h1 tag. The key is not to focus on one or a few criteria to the detriment of all others. The idea is to optimize your search engine optimization efforts by using as many of the criteria successfully as possible.

Effective search engine optimization is a combination of on page criteria and off page criteria working together to produce a positive effect on search rankings. Knowing what those criteria are is the first step. Learning how to employ them successfully is the next. Focusing too much on a single criteria is a sure way to fall into search oblivion, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

                      Category: Keyword Research                      

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