 keyword optimization simple tricks to optimize your website   a keyword by any other name is just keyword diversity  this is part 2 of my seo series if you missed the first one you can read it online here the purpose of this series is to give a plain english layman s approach to seo this is for the virtual diy er who doesn t mind getting their typing fingers a little dirty none of these tips require any great technical wizardry or voodoo magic just a little persistence if you can type a word doc then you can make changes to your site using a wysiwyg what you see is what get editor like dreamweaver frontpage coda and many others as promised we re going to delve more into the amoebic and intentionally cryptic world of search engine optimization it s amoebic because the rules are always changing it s cryptic because the search engine s don t want to give away their secrets only to have them exploited sound like fun yet oh yeah one last thing i have to tell you this post is a long read that s because there s a lot to say i was wading through mountains of info trying to trim this down to as few salient points as were necessary but hey if this is what you re looking for i m confident you ll find it informative keywords the most abused and misunderstood aspect of seo people have a hard time with keywords there s a lot of confusion about just what it is keywords do and how they should be used a lot of that is because keywords as is much of internet marketing is intangible and cerebral by nature but on a technical level keywords are verbal clues to google and others who use sophisticated programs called spiders to crawl webpages and try to figure out a lot of things including if the site s legit what it s about and what others think it s about keywords play a role in all of this they really form the foundation you build the rest of your search engine marketing strategy around and any successful online marketing campaign begins with good keyword research let s establish a vocabulary for the sake of clarity how often a keyword is repeated is called keyword density the idea of using as many different permutations and variations on a theme for your keyword is called keyword diversity on a well optimized site you want both density and diversity but if i were to say one is more important than the other it is unquestionably variety lastly keyword more often than not refers to two or more words so it s more like a keyphrasebut for whatever reason people still call it a keyword i like to call them keyword phrases how s that for middle of the road  let s optimize keyword density keyword density the much used and abused shortcut to the top of the serps search engine results page nowadays using the same keyword over and over is more likely to see your site blacklisted than promoted hiding the keyword in same colored background text and using the word an absurd amount of times in page copy are quick ways to get your site banished but it remains true today though to a much lesser degree and within reason that if you use a keyword more search engines will rank you higher current estimates say don t let your keyword exceed 5 of your on page text what s more important is to produce content that s easy to read and natural sounding keyword diversity now keyword diversity is a real ticket to quick results think of it this way you want the keyword phrases on your page to match as closely as possible the words which people use to search with if you sell wedding favors for example some varied keywords phrases would be wedding favors unique wedding favors special wedding favors bridal favors wedding gift ideas favors for weddings etc you d think there was a finite way to search for something online i mean you want wedding favors then that s what you type into google right well we re going to learn that not only is that not the case those long tail conversational searches like  where can i find wedding favors  and typos like  weding favers  are your easiest bet at driving traffic to your site they may be bad typists or have poor search engine skills but you d probably still like to get their business it works like this short keywords like wedding favors are extremely competitive but long tail and specific phrases like victorianera wedding favors are exponentially easier to rank for what s more the more specific the search is that brought a visitor to your site the likely they are to convert that is do what you want them to do once they ve arrived at your site these long tail and diverse searches are your best tool for pulling in new visitors organically that is without having to pay for it try to find these holes in the web and plug them up with your website by using a diverse keyword strategy i ll cover some tools at the end of this post that will help you vary up your keywords link text not all uses of your keyword phrases are created equal i mean a simple text phrase is good and all but a link from another website containing your keyword phrase is roughly umpteen times better perhaps it s a link on another site that says discount wedding favors well that s keyword gold right there and it makes a certain sense i must admit if someone tells you they sell the cheapest wedding favors ever you re not really inclined to believe them because their self interest could be infringing upon their honesty but what if someone else not apparently affiliated with them says the same thing google thinks huh so other people think that this site is about that too and it gives the site more authority if you have other websites currently linking to yours contact the webmaster and see if they can t change the link text to a keyword phrase you re targeting to learn more about this check out this wikipedia article on google bombing  which takes this concept to the extreme common pitfalls as with any seo technique you can mess up keyword optimization but the good news is you usually have to be doing something you shouldn t be doing to get hurt one way is to keyword stuff to the degree that you get yanked from the search engine results another more subtle but equally detrimental pitfall is to write for search engine robots instead of your human readers you ve seen the sites that read something like this uniqueweddingfavorscom sells the latest in special wedding favors for bridal showers and wedding reception favors we also sell discounted wedding favors and wedding favors at bulk rates if that was painful for you to read then congratulations you are a living normal human being writing onpage copy like that might get your page to show up in the search engine results but it won t convince any visitors to become customers and that s the ultimate goal one last pitfall and this can be particularly frustrating to your visitors is to optimize for keywords that don t have anything to do with your site a lot of searches people do includes the modifier free as in free ringtones or free software many marketers noticed the trend and began to optimize their keyword phrases to include the word free toowhether or not they had a free product offering this is a surefire way to annoy your visitor and have them never come back misleading your customers diminishes your business online authority and legitimacy and in an environment where anyone can hide behind a website that may be your most important asset resources find out what your online competitors are ranking for both organically normal search results and which phrases they re paying to rank for payperclick  competecom and spyfucom time to permutate and alternate ad nauseam quintura will take a generic search term and display an interactive menu of possible search modifiers now figure out how many people are searching for your keywords and keyword phrases like them this tool is robust and can provide an overwhelming amount of info but it s good stuff and it s worth the time to figure out  seobookcom keyword tracker so there you have it that just about barely scrapes the surface of keyword optimization but it gives you plenty of info that if you make a good effort of it will produce good results for your site depending how competitive your niche is you show up on the first page of a lot of searches just by tweaking your pages keyword content some additional reading cause you know you want to google bombing what s a link worth  the linkerati your best friend let me know if you found this post informative or if you ve got more questions by commenting below ben heitman design netmanageit    internet marketing keyword optimization search engines sem seo  