Optimum Keyword Density is a Gimmick!
A lot of Search Engine Optimisers live with a belief that having an “optimum keyword density” on your web pages helps in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – it’s a gimmick. Your content is the soul of your website and not the keywords or keyword density. Keywords have to be there on your web pages not for the search engines to read them, but for the users, to make them feel that they are at the right place; they got what they searched for. Search engines are smart enough to know what people will like. I’ll tell you how!
A search engine crawler doesn’t read your content, it only collects it and by some embedded intelligence tries to relate your content to other benchmarks to identify the theme of your content. The collected information is sent to the search engine’s index which is a categorized collection of data collected from millions of websites and web pages. Search engines are programmed to show good quality content in their results.
Optimal keyword density gimmick explained
Keyword density generally pertains to the number of times a keyword has appeared in your content. The content should be written naturally with the topic or subject in mind and not the targeted keyword in mind. If the content is written naturally then the keyword density will no longer be the pinch and you could write what you want to, for your visitors.
If your visitors like the content, so will Google, Yahoo, Live or any other search engine.
The math is simple. If you write an article naturally you will anyway end up using the keyword a few number of times. You can’t write a 300 words article about apples without using the word apple or apples or it’s synonym a few number of times. That’s it! There is no hard and fast rule for a keyword to appear a fixed number of times in your content. It is only the quality and relevance of the content that matters.
How will this content writing strategy help?
Good content will always be appreciated by people and then it will also receive votes (back links). Every vote counts and every vote helps in building your website’s image in the eyes of Google or any other search engine.
A real human visitor will actually read your content, understand it and based on that decide the quality of your website. And based on this decision the user will either want to stay on your website, subscribe to your content or simply exit and never come back.
Now, what makes more sense? Real people liking your content and wanting to read it more and more and return to your website or a programmed crawler or a search engine? Of course real people.
To keep in mind while writing content
The content written about a topic, say apples, should never read like -
An apple is red from the outside. From the inside, an apple is watery and juicy. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apple helps build immunity. Apple also cleans teeth and strengthens the gums.
Two words for such piece of information – bull shit. This is unwanted information and the last thing I or you would want to read if presented in such a way. Mathematically it will lead to high keyword density and that is why search engines hate content with high keyword density, because we humans hate that too.
So, there’s nothing like an optimal keyword density. Just keep your content plain and simple for your visitors because if you can make people love your content then Google & Yahoo will also show their affection for it.
The curry is served!
SEO in 5 basic steps – Search Engine Optimisation
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
SEO is the process of fine tuning a website to increase it’s visibility on search engines.
Ever wondered if your site could appear on top of search results on a search engine like Google or Yahoo? If not then you better start wondering because that is one of the best ways to drive tarffic to your website as you dont have to pay for this traffic. It is free advertising for your site on world’s most popular websites – Google and Yahoo search. SEO can help you get that free organic traffic!
5 simple steps to optimise your website for search engines
I’m trying to create a series of such tutorials that’ll help you learn and implement SEO techniques on your site. I’ll try to give an in-depth knowledge on SEO but it will take time and a lot of post in a series. For now enjoy a small tutorial to make yourself aware on what SEO is and it’s fundamentals. If the fundamentals are clear you’ll never have any problem with SEO no matter what.
The following is what you need to do as the first thing once you launch your site or go through once you have launched a new section on your website. This will also help you optimise your site right from the scratch.
1. Make your site visible
First of all you need to make sure that your site’s content is readable by search engine crawlers. Data collected by these crawlers is sent back to the search engine and used in evaluating your site’s content. Flash, Javascript, AJAX and likes are not readable by crawlers till date. For this you can use HTML in conjunction with CSS to produce text and image effects.
To check how a search engine would see your website you can view your site in all-text mode (done by disabling styles in your browser View) or use a text-only browser. Other than that you can use a search engine simulator like the one here.
Make sure that links on your website are HTML hyperlinks and not Flash or Javascript. The way you link your web pages on your site is one of the most essential factors a search engine considers while rating your web pages and the domain (entire website).
Write original content for the website copy or else you’ll never be able to sustain top rankings on Google, Yahoo or LIVE search.
2. Choose the right Keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that users search for on a search engine. Make a list of such keywords that you would want your site or web pages to appear on top for on Google or Yahoo search.Generally, your keywords list should contain the words that make sense for your website’s visitors. If your website is about apples then include keywords about apples not mangoes.
Once you’re done with the list you can see how many times those keywords are searched for; you can do this using this tool. Keyword tools only give an approximate idea about the search volumes for a set of keywords. You can also use such tools for seeing other variations of your keywords that you could include in your list.
A keyword having a high search count will often have high competition because a lot of other websites will be wanting to rank top for those keywords, for an obvious reason. You can check the competition by looking at the number of results found by Google for that search. To get a better estimate search for allintitle:yourkeyword, this will show you the websites that are competing on your keyword.
3. Use the keywords
If a user sees what he search for on your site, does it not make sense? So for this reason we need to place keywords on different places in a web page:
- Page Title: The <title> of your web page should explain the purpose and identity of that page. Write a title no longer than 10 words which also contains your keywords. If the web page is about apples then a title like “Information all about Apples” is good because that’s what inside. Don’t try to fool people by writing “Information – not only on Apples but also Mangoes and Pamela Anderson” because this ain’t going to work mateys.
- Page Heading: The heading or <h1> of your page should be what follows it, just like a newspaper headline. If the page is solely about a Mobile Phone then a heading like “Information on Mobile Phones” is good enough but do not write “Mobile Phones, Computers and Roller Skates” because it won’t make sense.
The idea is to optimise your web pages only for the keywords that make sense for your website’s visitors. The content on your page is for your visitors not for search engines.
- Body Text: The content you write for a page should be written naturally about the topic the page is about. Don’t try to stuff keywords here and there just to optimise the page. If your visitors don’t like what they see then its nothing more than a waste.
4. Links
The way our site is linked plays a very important role in SEO. There are two types of links – internal and external links.
Internal Links are the links that are on your own site and are links to your site’s pages from and to each other. Basically, your site’s navigation collectively comprises of interal links. The anchor texts for these links should contain the main keyword of the page it is linking to. Try and keep anchor texts for internal links small, concise and do not unnecessarily stuff keywords into them. Your site’s navigation is for real humans; let them find it easy to use your site.
External Links are links from other sites to your site or your web pages. Every incoming link from other site to your site is counted as a vote for your site as long as it makes sense for that site’s visitors to come to your site. If your site is about apples then its ok to have a link from a site about mangoes but definitely not from a site about dating and relationships. Worst case, its even ok to have a link to your apple site from a web page about a “Woman’s relationship with an Apple” 
– it is only about the relevance of that link. The anchor text of external links too should contain your keywords.
5. Popularise
This part in SEO is the respiratory system of your Search Marketing plan. Keywords, Content and Links together are the oxygen and popularising your site the mechanism which uses this oxygen to produce a happily functioning breathing website. 
nerdy huh?
In “non-discovery channel” language submit your website url to other sites that may want to add a link to your site. This does not mean you start paying those people to link to your site. Getting links should be natural – if your site is really good then other websites will link to you out of nature because everyone wants to give good references and resources to their visitors.
Did Wikipedia pay anyone to link to them? It happened on it’s own because Wikipedia’s content is a good reference to give.
Submit your web page urls to:
- bookmark and information sharing websites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Yahoo Buzz!
- regional and niche web directories – some people often use these directories to find local businesses and interesting sites.
- Dmoz – it is one of the biggest a library of websites added by human editors. Google uses it as it’s directory.
- Yahoo Directory – same as Dmoz but used by Yahoo, it is good too.
- other search engines like MSN/Live, AOL, Ask, Search etc. – this can be done by finding the “Submit a Site” or “Add URL” option on these search engines. Try searching for it on the respective search engine.
Do all of the above with your new website and you would definitely start getting some traffic from Google or Yahoo in 3-4 weeks. Getting to the top will take time and in some cases it takes a lot more effort.
SEO is not a complex procedure, it only requires patience and smart planning.
The above tips are only for beginners. There is a lot more to SEO and Search Marketing; I will try to bring that up soon on this blog.
Until then just sip on this curry!
NewsCred – Now News Comes with Credibility Assurance
NewsCred.com is a news aggregator that collects news and ranks them based on it’s source’s credibility unlike Digg based models where the news stories are ranked by their popularity among readers. NewsCred is a startup based out of Sweden, Switzerland and Bangladesh; launched it’s public beta in August this year.
Basically, NewsCred’s algorithm takes into account the quality (credibility voted by readers) of articles, authors and news source and ranks them in order to qualify them to appear on home page. An analytics keeper module on NewsCred maintains a track record of writers, bloggers, jounraliststs and news sources. The module also records industry trends in order to further empower the algo.
As a signed user you can also customize your view of your default page. In NewsCred terminology they call it ‘your newspaper’ because you can personalize your page by selecting the news sources from which you want to read and create your own newspaper page.
NewsCred vs Digg
Although NewsCred is an excellent tool to get quality news, I really haven’t understood the need of such an algorithm. Shouldn’t we get news based on the popularity of the content inside instead of how good or bad the news source is?
With the current NewsCred algorithm a reader can only view news based on credibility (quality) of the news source. The algo takes a myth for granted that only popular sources will provide good news stories which is not totally correct.
In such a scenario, the news a reader is more likely to see on NewsCred would be from popular blogs and newspapers’ sites. This means as a reader you are less likely to spot a news story that may be good and worth reading but from a less popular source.
Digg is immune to such apartheid because if your content is good then you can have your “1000 Diggs of fame” no matter how popular or credible a source you are. Ranking on Digg is purely based on the likability of the news story’s or blog’s content and the likability here also is expressed by votes (diggs) casted by readers.
And then once you are famous on Digg then you might even make it to NewsCred’s list of credible sources which would in turn get you more visibility and more Diggs.
Being credibly famous, my friend, is a virtue
Both the sites rely on cumulative social behaviour towards any content and this makes both of them a neutral & unbiased tool to explore interesting information available on the web.
Hot Curry!
Google Analytics – new look for the homepage
Not so long ago, Google Analytics launched a set of new features (still in private beta) a couple of weeks ago and with that they have also made some changes to the user interface to make it more usable. Last week they released a new layout for the home (Analytics Settings) page.
Now, the new home page looks more like a roster where you’ll see the list of all your analytics acounts. Along with the list they now provide more details for an account like the number of visits, average time on site, bounce rate, goals completed and a dynamic field to see the percentage change in a metric over a day, week, month or an year.
- Google Analytics – new home page
This “%age change” field has proven to be so helpful if you are monitoring multiple account at one time. This field now enables you to see a change in your sites’ visits, avg. time, goals and bounce rate compared to their values last month or last week. So now you won’t have to drill into each and every account individually to get different metrics. Now you can simply know whether there is an increase or fall in any metric.
All in all, great effort by googlers to make their analytics tool more usable and likable.
Web browser turns Social; here comes Flock
I used to wonder if there’s a website which could be my first page when I log on to my computer every morning and could serve latest news headlines, my email and social network updates. Fortunate enough, I discovered iGoogle and NetVibes, later Facebook became my first page because I can get all the updates I want on one single website.
But then I wondered why can’t I get a browser that could do it all for me. I got an answer for that, Flock – a social web browser.
Yes, that is what it’s creators call it, social web browser and to some extent it is an appropriate nomenclature. Why? Because the web browser has over 23 social web services integrated. You can follow your friends through built in friend feeds from Twitter and Facebook, share & search videos on YouTube, images on Flickr, news feeds from Digg all available in the sidebar of the browser. What more could you ask for? A built in blogging tool perhaps? How about an all-in-one photo uploader? and there’s more; a built in RSS Feed reader as well.
- MyWorld – Flock’s built in start page with your RSS Feeds, Friends’ Activity, Favorite Sites
Flock's sidebar shows your friends' activity from Facebook, Digg, Twitter etc.
The web browser has been built on Mozilla’s engine and therefore has a similar UI and keyboard shortcuts as Firefox. You can also export all your settings, options and information from Firefox to Flock and start using it readily just like Firefox but with an added flavour of social web.
Flock has it all and it promises a rich wholesome user experience as far as using social web applications is concerned. As long as you use social web applications you need the power of Flock; it simply facilitates sharing and social networking up to a level where you start seeing your browser as a place where you live in the world wide web.
This curry is super hot!
