That's a great response, thank you, really helpful.

What about making sure the first instance of your keyword is in bold close to the start of the body text?

Again I get mixed views on this.

Thanks

Craig

We employee an outside agency to write content for our website as we do not have the ability in house to write unique and good quality content.

They have just sent an article which is around 300 words. I told them the keyword phrases to use. When I got the document there is only 1 instance of the keyword phrase(s) in it.

Now there seems to be a conflict here amongst posts I have read and general SEO advise as to how many times it should be present (SEOmoz indicates 4 times for instance), our outside agency says it doesn't matter.

Now if I have a page optimised for 2 keywords this starts making things tricky and probably looks keyword stuffed to the reader.

Assuming the keywords are present once in meta tags, H1, meta descriptions and alt text, what do people think is best practice taking into account recent panda updates?

Thoughts appreciated.

Thanks Craig

I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all?

Thoughts and opinions appreciated