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How Many Keywords Should You Use On Your Website?

Written by: Mathew Tamin

Article Overview: Manipulating keywords on a page is the key to search engine optimization. This, of course, raises the question of how many keywords to use on a page?

How Many Keywords Should You Use On Your Website?

Manipulating keywords on a page is the key to search engine optimization. This, of course, raises the question of how many keywords to use on a page? How Many Keywords To Use

How many keywords to use on a page is a question that has caused many a sleepless night for site owners and search engine optimization specialist. Fortunately, the issue isn't the nightmare it used to be.

Historically, the answer has varied from time to time, often changing every time a search engine updated the algorithm it used to rank pages. Since this occurred at least once if not twice a year for Google, Yahoo and MSN, you ended up feeling like a yoyo jumping back and forth to hit keyword marks.

The number of keywords per page is known in the industry as the keyword density of a page. It represents the percentage of times the keyword phrase appears compared to all the text on the page. In 2004, Google wanted to see a keyword density of 10 to 15 percent. In 2005, the number dropped to one to three percent. If you had a site with 5,000 pages, this represented a nightmare scenario since every page had to be changed. Coffee sales rose, chain smoking became a habit and Lasik eye surgeons grew rich.

Search engine optimization has historically been a war between people like me and the search engines. The search engines know I am trying to get high rankings by figuring out their algorithms. They don't mind this if I do it ethically, but they are concerned I will find a loophole in their algorithm and get low quality pages ranked high. To counter this, they constantly made changes and I reacted. It was a tug of war that I hated and, I imagine, they did as well. Fortunately, those days are over.

Google has the most traffic, so you always want to optimize for it. Google has given up on the keyword density war, and incorporate new ranking methods. It did massive updates of both its servers and ranking methodology. Part and parcel to this, keyword density and reciprocal linking were devalued in the ranking process.

The question is no long how many keywords to use on your pages. It is where you use them and how. The first key is to create text on a page without worrying about keywords. Write whatever you would normally do if you weren't worried about keywords, but make sure you create at least 250 words. Next, incorporate your keyword phrase at least once and not more than twice in your first paragraph. Incorporate it a few times in your text, but only where it flows naturally. Finally, incorporate it at least once in your final paragraph since Yahoo seems to place importance on it.

People will swear that keyword density matters. I publish thousands of pages a year and just don't see it. The only time it becomes an issue is if you use the keywords too often.

The keyword phrase I am using for this page is "how many keywords to use." Give the article another read and see how often I use it. I expect this page to be ranked in the top three in Google, Yahoo and MSN once it is indexed and processed.

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Article Tags: algorithm, algorithms, chain smoking, coffee sales, google, habit, keyword density, keyword phrase, lasik eye surgeons, loophole, low quality, massive updates, nightmare scenario, reciprocal linking, search engine optimization, search engine optimization specialist, search engines, sleepless night, tug of war, yoyo



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