BrianStocker.org » Link Development http://www.brianstocker.org/blog Internet Marketing discussion, tips and information for small business owners with websites. Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:54:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=5946 What are SEO Articles? http://www.brianstocker.org/blog/2008/05/08/what-are-seo-articles/ http://www.brianstocker.org/blog/2008/05/08/what-are-seo-articles/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 17:36:13 +0000 Brian http://www.brianstocker.org/blog/2008/05/08/what-are-seo-articles/ What are SEO Articles?
SEO Articles are web content that has a specified number of keywords. For example, an article, that may be part of a Learning Library or Knowlege Center on a website, may contain 17 repetitions of a particular keyword. For a 1000 word article, that is 1.7% keywords density.

Keyword density has been debated to death as many already know, and in general the consensus seems to be that keyword density is somewhat of a red herring. Most will agree that chasing after a mythical formula of keyword density that will give a first page ranking is almost a complete waste of time. Nevertheless, having keywords on your page is better than not having them on your page.

How many keywords should I have on my pages?

There is no clear answer and really no way to find out. In the past, the ‘follow the leader’ strategy worked but no longer. It used to be possible to analyze the top ranking sites in your area, and copy everything that they are doing and you would rank as well. Those days are long gone. However, there are a few things that you can do and here are a few tips:

Make it look natural. Repeat keywords 2 or 3 times (in 500 word articles) as a bare minimum.

Use secondary keywords. Brainstorm and research alternative keywords. Come up with a list of primary, secondary and third level keywords, as well as synonyms. Each primary keyword becomes an article and is usually included in the title. Secondary keywords should be included in sub headings.

The goal of having different levels of keywords is so that anyone can still tell what the articles is about if the primary keyword is taken out.

For more information on SEO articles, see my post on Anatomy of a Content Site and my post on Google loves Broad Content, and Content Sites Sell

]]> http://www.brianstocker.org/blog/2008/05/08/what-are-seo-articles/feed/ 0 Linking Criteria http://www.brianstocker.org/blog/2006/11/18/linking-criteria/ http://www.brianstocker.org/blog/2006/11/18/linking-criteria/#comments Sun, 19 Nov 2006 02:41:07 +0000 Brian http://www.brianstocker.org/blog/2006/11/18/linking-criteria/ Linking is the staple of SEO. Reciprocal links, one-way links, directory links, links from article syndication are all part of a well rounded linking campaign.

With the search engines, especially Google, looking for quality and ‘trust-rank’ for sites, choosing high quality link partners is critical.

So how do you choose link partners?

My criteria are:

1) Positive Page Rank (No Grey Tool bar)
2) Low amount of advertising
3) Outgoing links are only within the subject area
4) Incoming links are only within the subject area

While investigating a potential Google penalty, or SERP filter issue on one of my sites, I found this article which covers the topic very well,
http://www.ksl-consulting.co.uk/google_penalty.html

In the course of discussing penalties, indiscriminate reciprocal linking among them, they offer this simple advice:

To help identify quality link exchange partners we use a simple but effective test – regardless of indicated Page Rank, if you can’t find a website’s homepage in the top 20 of the Google search results (SERPS) when you search for the first 4 words of a site’s HTML title

This is a simple and quick way of identifying sites that have potential problems with Google and are undesirable link partners.

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