SEO Hosting Blog

You already know that keywords are the backbone of your search marketing campaign. When writing website copy, you know that you need to include the keywords into your copy so that the search engines can identify what your page is about and rank it accordingly.

However, there’s a very thin line between optimized copy and keyword-stuffed copy. Follow these tips to make sure you aren’t guilty of the latter.

• Read your copy aloud—One of the easiest, most effective editing tricks I use is to read my copy aloud before finalizing it. Whenever you read it out loud, you can get a better idea of how it will sound in the reader’s mind when he’s scanning through it. Ideally, your copy should flow easily and have a conversational feel to it. When reading your copy aloud, it’ll become apparent if you’re using your keyword too often. It won’t feel natural, and you’ll stumble over difficult keyword-stuffed phrases. Identify trouble spots in your copy, and correct them.
• Measure keyword density—Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who believes there’s a magic keyword density that will get your website vaulted to the top of the search results. That’s a silly SEO myth passed off by SEO consultants who are stuck in the past. That being said, I do think that measuring keyword density serves a purpose. It gives you a clear idea of just how often you’re using your keyword in your web copy. If the percentage is too high (usually anything more than 5%), your copy will likely be difficult to read. Of course, there are exceptions where certain keywords don’t have a lot of synonyms or just naturally lend themselves to being used often.
• Use keyword synonyms—Using keyword synonyms is a good idea for a couple of reasons. First, it breaks up the monotony of your copy. For example, let’s suppose you’re targeting the keyword “internet marketing in Houston.” Rather than saying “internet marketing in Houston” 10 times in your copy, you could mix in “Houston online marketing”, “web marketing in Houston”, “Houston internet marketing”, and so on.  This will make your copy much easier for humans to read.

Another benefit of using keyword synonyms is that it gives the search engines more terms to pull from and to rank you for. This ties into the concept of “latent semantic indexing” where Google brings up pages based on the searcher’s intent rather than just specifically matching the key phrase entered.

Do you check your copy to make sure it isn’t overflowing with keywords? Share your anti-keyword stuffing tips in the replies.

Common in the insurance business you will hear things like the 80/20 plan. What that means is some insurance plans will cover 80% of the bill while leaving you with the remaining 20% balance. With Internet marketing, I have coined my own 80/20 plan and indeed put it into practice.

My business is mainly in developing niche sites that are run using WordPress. I write content that targets very high paying keywords in Google AdWords. My content indeed is very well written, unique, useful, entertaining and informative. The goal in mind though is to monetize it using Google AdSense. Some content I write that targets certain keyword phrases need a little more boost than others. Most of my content targets longtail keywords. However, some do not and need additional love.

The 80/20 plan that I follow is very simple. I invest 20% of my time writing content and 80% of my time marketing it. Depending on the strength of competition of the keyword phrases I am targeting will dictate the level of depth I go into marketing each article or page I create. For me, Internet marketing is a primary method of promoting my content on the Internet. It combines two elements: search engine marketing and social network marketing. (more…)

During the week I spend some time reading up on the latest news and gossip within the search engine market and week to week I end up having quite a few articles that I end up bookmarking or adding into my favorites. While I will continue to save these articles in my various bookmarks for my own personal use, I figured that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to share with you some of the articles that I enjoyed reading through the week.

With that being said, here is an overview of some of the articles that I read this week that I think that you’ll enjoy reading too. Every Friday, you can mark your calendars and be sure to visit the SEOHosting.com blog for some really excellent references to what I would consider, “The Best in SEO” for the week. I call this weekly series, SEO Friendly Friday. Hope you enjoy, I know I sure enjoy helping your learn. (more…)

Developing a highly visited website, a “traffic worthy site”, is essential for your web site’s success. While developing the site, however, you need to keep in mind that not only is your site going to be seen by the human eye, but also by the nonhuman eye. How is that? Well, search engines along with their spiders and crawlers, will also be viewing your website. Having a sound web design, therefore, is crucial for bringing traffic to your site. How is this done?

First, you need to know what your company’s keywords are. What words come to your mind when describing your business or interest? These may be your keywords. Do online research to find out how popular they are. There are a variety of keyword selector tools that you can use for no charge. Yahoo’s Overture is a good one, another is Word Tracker. Once you have access to these keyword selector tools, simply type in what words are important to you and results will be displayed regarding their popularity. The results can also help you decide which words are most important and will bring the most visitors to your site.

Secondly, you need to know how to optimize your keywords to your advantage. This is known as keyword optimization. Your website must have good keyword optimization if it is to perform to its best advantage and bring you success from it. Keyword optimization is part of search engine optimization (SEO). You want, and need, to know how the search engines will notice your website. Also, each time a person searches for something online (search utilization) they type in the words that are important to them. Hence, they type in their keywords. Sites will pop up containing those keywords and offer the viewer a chance to visit the site which matches their needs. It is important to note that about 85% of humans arrive at websites via search engines. That is a large amount. See the importance of both knowing what your keywords are and how to optimize them to get the most success from the search engines? Search engine optimization is highly important to the success of your website.

The best part of keyword and search engine optimization is the fact that the results will send you targeted potential, prequalified customers. This is due to the fact that the person performing the search is specifically looking for what you offer. They are using your keywords.

Also remember that when developing your website, do not use a word processor. Word processing software is well known for containing a variety of sloppy, hidden codes which are not search engine friendly.

These are just a few things to take into consideration while developing a website that receives a high traffic volume. Use them and you can only benefit.