<h2 align="center" style="color:#999999">&quot;A keyword by any other name is just keyword diversity&quot;</h2>
<p>  This is part 2 of my SEO series.  If you missed the first one, you can <a href="seo1.html" target="_blank">read it online here.</a>  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 &quot;what you see is what get&quot; editor like Dreamweaver, frontpage, coda, and many others. </p>
<p>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? </p>
<p>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. </p>
<h2>Keywords - the most abused and misunderstood aspect of SEO</h2>
<p>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 &quot;spiders&quot; 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.</p>
<p>Let's establish a vocabulary for the sake of clarity: How often a keyword is repeated is called &quot;keyword density&quot;.   The idea of using as many different permutations and variations on a theme for your keyword is called &quot;keyword diversity&quot;.  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, &quot;keyword&quot; more often than not refers to two or more words, so it's more like a keyphrase...but for whatever reason people still call it a keyword.  I like to call them keyword phrases.  How's that for middle of the road?</p>
<h1><a name="checklist"></a>Let's Optimize...</h1>
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<h2>Keyword Density</h2>
<p> 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 <a href="hiddentext.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">same colored background text</a> 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.</p>
<h2>Keyword Diversity</h2>
<p>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 &quot;<span class="style1">wedding favors, unique wedding favors, special wedding favors, bridal favors, wedding gift ideas,   favors for weddings, etc. </span>&quot;  You'd think there was a finite way to search for something online, I mean, you want &quot;wedding favors&quot; 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 <span class="style1"><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=where+can+I+find+wedding+favors&amp;btnG=Google+Search" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">&quot;where can I find wedding favors?&quot;</a></span> and typos like <span class="style1">&quot;<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;q=weding+favers&amp;btnG=Search" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">weding favers</a>&quot;</span> 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 <span class="style1">&quot;Wedding Favors&quot;</span> are extremely competitive, but long tail and specific phrases like <span class="style1">&quot;victorian-era wedding favors&quot;</span> 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 &quot;convert&quot;, 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.</p>
<h2>Link Text</h2>
<p>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 <em>umpteen</em> times better.  Perhaps it's a link on another site that says <span class="style1">&quot;discount wedding favors&quot;</span> - well that's keyword gold right there. And it makes a certain sense I must admit, if someone tells you they sell the &quot;cheapest wedding favors&quot; 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, &quot;Huh, so other people think that this site is about that too&quot;  and it gives the site more &quot;authority&quot;. 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 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bombing" target="_blank">Google Bombing</a>, which takes this concept to the extreme.</p>
<h2>Common Pitfalls</h2>
<p>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,</p>
<blockquote><p>&quot;Unique-wedding-favors.com 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.&quot;</p></blockquote>
<p>If that was painful for you to read, then congratulations, you are a living, normal human being.  Writing on-page 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.</p>
<p>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 <span class="style1">&quot;free&quot;</span> as in <span class="style1">&quot;free ringtones&quot;</span> or <span class="style1">&quot;free software.&quot;</span>  Many marketers noticed the trend and began to optimize their keyword phrases to include the word <span class="style1">&quot;free&quot;</span> too.....whether 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.</p>
<h1>Resources</h1>
<p>Find out what your online competitors are ranking for both organically (normal search results) and which phrases they're paying to rank for (Pay-Per-Click): <a href="http://searchanalytics.compete.com/site_referrals/" target="_blank">Compete.com</a> and <a href="http://spyfu.com" target="_blank">Spyfu.com</a></p>
<p>Time to permutate and alternate <em>ad nauseam.</em>  <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://quintura.com">Quintura</a> will take a generic search term and display an interactive menu of possible search modifiers.</p>
<p>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: <a href="http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/" target="_blank">SEObook.com keyword tracker</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<h1>Some additional reading, 'cause you know you want to</h1>
<p>    <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bombing" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google Bombing</a><br />
    <a href="http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_seo_tips.shtml" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What's a link Worth?</a><br />
    <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-the-linkerati" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Linkerati: your best friend</a></p>
<p>Let me know if you found this post informative or if you've got more questions by commenting below.</p>
<p>Ben Heitman, Design<br />
    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; NetManageIT</p>
