Simple on-site SEO - bet practice for keywords in content
-
Hello,
The Moz on-page grader will give a grade of A if the keyword appears exactly in the content at least one time.
If there are 500 words and a lot of it is about the main keyword, what have you found to be important to look for beyond the on-page grader - beyond the one exact instance of the keyword? I'm specifically talking just about keywords in the content.
My guess is that it needs to occur 3 or 4 times in different forms and at least once exactly, but the on-page grader doesn't require it.
What have you found?
-
Try not just focusing on the exact keyword but also closely related keywords. If the article is well written and picks up good social traction , you might end up ranking for different closely related keywords, not just the main keyword.
-
Interesting! Is this a hummingbird thing where it only need to be mentioned directly once as long as the content is on topic?
-
Matt is correct. Keyword density is no longer a thing that helps positively with ranks, in my opinion. It can hurt you if it is overused though.
If you're worried about content being naturally over-stuffed, that's a valid concern. If your client is in the pizza industry, how do you not use the word "pizza" all the time? The answer is: creatively. It'll be different with every industry, like with pizza, focus on toppings, dough, cheese, sauce, etc. to dilute the density.
Don't force it in, make it look natural, keep it in the H1, title, URL, and other best practices, but try to mention it only when required in the content to reduce mentions. Anything above one mention in the body isn't required, but sometimes quality of content requires it to be mentioned more.
-
We've found that "keyword density", as it used to be, isn't really a positive ranking factor any more. Like meta keywords, our testing shows that 1, 2, 3 times ... that's fine. 15, 20, 30 - that leads to problems. Anything else really doesn't matter. You can use it - don't overuse it. It's one of those things ... not really positive, just don't kill it to death. (We had a client put in a keyword over 500 times on one page. And didn't rank. SHOCKING.)
-
I usually try and have them in the Meta Title, Main Title ( preferably in H1 ), Sub titles as well. ( as long it makes sense to include them there )
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing posts that target same keyword to target SIMILAR keywords
Hello, I'm new to SEO and until the last year I was not aware that creating content that target same keywords would make Google choose only one to rank better. Can I leave the best page (highest ranked one) as it is and change the rest that target the same keyword to target similar keywords ? Just a simple example: I have two pages targeting "best supplements to muscle gain" Leave the best one targeting that keyword and now I change the content of the other to target "best supplements for muscle size" This is the smartest move or I'm missing something here and will make things worse ? Ex: maybe some of tthose pages with same keyword arent ranking for the keyword I want but are ranking for another one that I dont know. I'm really insecure about making changes and end up getting worse results.. Thank you (sorry for my bad english)
On-Page Optimization | | Glinski1 -
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
Keeping SEO benefit of an old URL by changing content
We have a blog written in Oct 2012 that accounts for 30-40% of our traffic (174K pageviews per year/80% bounce rate). We are considering updating the content but are concerned that it will fall off the search engine's map if the content is updated to include information that is not exactly the same, but relevant. The URL would be the same and the original blog content would be shortened with a link to the full blog. The new content would include other FDA products under investigation. Here is the blog: http://myadvocates.com/blog/fda-issues-warning-about-so-called-brain-supplement-prevagen
On-Page Optimization | | jgodwin0 -
Will changing a site from https to normal http have any SEO impact if we do automatic redirects?
We currently have a site which uses https and want to change to normal http only (for reasons unrelated to SEO). We were planning to do this with a change in our server configuration (we use Nginx, and can automatically redirect https to http). Our site has been around for approx 1 year, so there are links floating around in the Internet which will still be using https. These will be automatically redirected to http. What will be the impact on our SEO? I understand that our webmaster tools account may need to change...
On-Page Optimization | | michaelcho0 -
SEO targeted text on Mobile Site Version
Hey Mozzers, I run SEO for a retail site www.uncommongoods.com. We are building a mobile version of our site on m.uncommongoods.com On each of the category pages of www.uncommongoods.com, we have included a few lines of text at the bottom of the page to get some of our target keywords into the body. As an example, if you look at this page: http://www.uncommongoods.com/office/journals-stationery/journals You'll see this copy at the bottom: "Find unique journals and diaries at UncommonGoods. Our creative journal gifts are great for marking special occasions with sentimental keepsakes." We are debating whether or not to remove this copy on the category pages of our mobile site, just to keep the pages as clean as possible. Would there be any risk in leaving this out ? Thanks for your help on this! -Zack
On-Page Optimization | | znotes0 -
Mass Duplicate Content
Hi guys Now that the full crawl is complete I've found the following: http://www.trespass.co.uk/mens-onslow-02022 http://www.trespass.co.uk/mens-moora-01816 http://www.trespass.co.uk/site/writeReview?ProductID=1816 http://www.trespass.co.uk/site/writeReview?ProductID=2022 The first 2 duplicate content is easily fixed by writing better product descriptions for each product (a lot of hours needed) but still an easy fix. The last 2 are review pages for each product which are all the same except for the main h1 text. My thinking is to add no index and no follow to all of these review pages? The site will be changing to magento very soon and theres still a lot of work to do. If anyone has any other suggestions or can spot any other issues, its appreciated. Kind regards Robert
On-Page Optimization | | yournetbiz1 -
KeyWord Density?
What is an acceptable density for a keyword? It's wise to push it as close to spam without sacrificing user experience, correct? I read an article on SeoMoz (outdated I think) that mentioned 6%. If it's a keyword phrase, do you have to make sure you don't go over the density level of a particular word in the phrase. If it's a three word phrase, do you have to not use any one word more than X% or just monitor the exact keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | JML11791 -
Duplicate content on area specific sites
I have created some websites for my company Dor-2-Dor and there is a main website where all of the information across the board is on (www.dor2dor.com) but I also have area specific sites which are for our franchisees who run certain areas around the country (www.swansea.dor2dor.com or www.oxford.dor2dor.com) The problem is that the content that is on a lot of the pages is the same on all of them for instance our faq's page, special offers etc. What is the best way to get these pages to rank well and not have the duplicate content issues and be ranked down by search engines? Any help will be greatly received.
On-Page Optimization | | D2DWeb0