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Written by Scott Greggory
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Saturday, February 19, 2011 |
 If you’re about to write copy for your new website, you may be struggling with how to make it appealing to your two distinct audiences: 1) your human customers and 2) the search engines that rank your site based on how relative your keywords are to the words and phrases those humans type in a search box.
You know you have to incorporate each web page’s keyword into the copy in order to get found. But how frequently? If you don’t use the keyword or phrase enough your page won’t place high in search engines. Use the keyword or phrase too often and not only could you be penalized by search engines for “keyword stuffing,” but your copy may turn off human visitors and cause them to leave your site shortly after they arrive.
Our suggestion: Shoot for a keyword density of 1%. In other words, use your keyword or phrase once for every 100 words of copy. If your page is 600 words long, use the keyword six times. And don’t forget to use the keyword in your page title or sub-title.
Another tip: If you’re working with a key phrase that’s longer or doesn’t fit comfortably into human-friendly copy, remember that you can use “keyword families.” For instance, if your key phrase is “southern California tire dealers,” you can use every conceivable form of that phrase and still get “credit” from the search engines for having used a key phrase. (Examples: Southern California Tire Dealers, Southern California Tire Dealer, Southern California, California, tire dealers, tire dealer, tires, tire.) That gives you a lot more options as a writer for human eyes.
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