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
-
SEO question
why does a business rank differ on google search and google maps (for example, a hair salon we do seo for ranks 5th for "hair salon in Dublin" on Google Maps and ranks 10th on Google search)
On-Page Optimization | | ryan.mamma0 -
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | | Bee1590 -
Duplicate content: Form labels and field content
I have a site that has 500 pages, each with unique content, the only content that could be deemed the same is the 'Make Contact' form, which has the same labels and placeholder text on each page. Is this likely to cause any duplicate content penalties?
On-Page Optimization | | deployseo0 -
Redirect closing established site to another established site.
We have 2 ecommerce websites with duplicate product/category content that have been around for years. "Site A" since 2004 and "Site B" since 2011. "Site B" doesn't generate many sells and we want to close the site in fear that it may look spammy to google and since we don't want to upkeep the site. Couple questions:
On-Page Optimization | | Tuurbo
1. Is it possible that "Site B" has damaged "Site A" with google since they are so similar?
2. Can i 301 redirect all of "Site B" to "Site A" without hurting "Site A"?
3. If question 2 is ok, should i use the "Change of Address" tool in google webmaster tools to point "Site B" to "Site A"? Thanks!0 -
Redirecting pages (old site to new site)
I have a question- there is one location, one set of pages for both the old and new site on the same host environment so when I did the redirect it get into a loop trying to redirect from itself to itself Not sure how its gonna affect SEO. Will pages get hit for duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | Yanez0 -
Does this site have a duplicate content issue?
Google WMT is showing me only 2 short meta descriptions under "HTML Improvements" but I believe http://www.customgia.com may have a content duplication issue. Numerous keywords are used repeatedly across many product descriptions. To make matters worse, every product page has a "Design It!" button that sends the user to a flash-based jewelry designer in which they can edit the product's appearance. I'm not sure if these "designer pages" are adding unnecessary and potentially damaging duplicate content but it's certainly a possibility. There are many items on this site that are similar to one another but not the same. The product description tend to use the same phrases over and over again - words like crystal, Swarovski, beaded, design it, customize, change, pearl, glass beads, iridescent, pearl, drop earrings are used a lot. What I'm stuck on is whether or not I should be focusing on a content duplication issue as the primary SEO problem or if there is something bigger. Thank you for any assistance you can provide!
On-Page Optimization | | rja2140 -
Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions
Hello, I'm doing on-site SEO for a client's ecommerce site. Are 160 words enough for a category description? I'm using the keywords once at the top of the description, and once at the bottom of the description, with the ones at the bottom reworded so that they are the keywords with a different word order. I used to put the keywords in 3 times but it just feels like stuffing. Is twice, worded differently the second time, enough for a category description? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Checking for content originality in a site
two part question on original content How would you go about checking if a site holds original content accept the long search quary within Google? ans also if I find many sites carrying my content and I am the original source should I replace the content? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy0