Google Keywords Part 6: Keyword Stuffing

Before moving on to the next part in our Google keywords series, I want to stop and give you a warning. As mentioned previously, our next step will be optimizing your site for your targeted keywords. The obvious approach would be to jam the keywords into the site’s text as many times as possible, so Google sees how relevant we are to this phrase. That would be a big mistake.

Let me share the story of a site I built recently. I had settled on a particularly good phrase for my Google keywords. Google’s top results were weak – the top ten all had low PageRanks (for background on PageRank see here). I acquired a domain name consisting entirely of this phrase. I set up my site to be optimized for it. I wrote the content, and squeezed in my Google keywords everywhere I reasonably could, without making the content appear spammy. Everything was set.

Under normal circumstances, I would expect to wait several months to see decent search engine results. After all, the domain was brand new, the site was starting out from square one, its PageRank was beginning from zero, and there were no other sites linking to mine. And all of those factors are negatives to Google. All I was starting with was a good domain, and a site that was highly targeted. I submitted my site to Google and waited.

In a few days, I checked how I was ranking for my keywords (you can do this with a site like this, or this Firefox plug-in). I was shocked to see that, despite everything going against me, I ranked number 17 on my very first indexing. This was an amazing result. With a few more pages of content and a few incoming links, getting into the top ten seemed like a sure thing. Number one was even within reach.

I got back to work on the site, being careful not to upset the balance I had established, and got ready to celebrate. In a few more days, I checked again to see how much better I was ranking.

The site had dropped from number 17 to number 107.

So what happened? I had over-optimized. Or to use the less graceful term, I was guilty of “keyword stuffing”. Keyword stuffing, simply put, means using your targeted Google keywords too many times. Google’s algorithms are designed to reward pages that focus on something specific, but also to punish anyone who might put up a page stuffed full of the same words just to achieve good position in their results. And I had apparently crossed the line – though interestingly, it took them a second pass to notice.

So where is the line? If anyone claims to know, they are lying (unless perhaps they work for Google, but Google guards their algorithms like the formula for Coke). However, it has been that the optimum keyword density is somewhere between three and seven percent. That is to say, your keywords make up no more than that portion of your content. You can check your keyword density with many different tools (just Google “keyword density“).

In my case, the various tools agreed that my Google keywords had a density of around 15%, making me look to Google like a medium-grade search engine spammer, and I was automatically penalized.

Although every use of my keywords was justified, and my writing included them gracefully, Google’s robots didn’t care. And there’s today’s lesson. You are writing for both people and computers. Be careful not to annoy either one of them, or you’ll be ignored by both.

I’ll report back as I make progress in clawing my way back up.

Google Keywords Part 5: Finalizing

Class is back in session – please take your seats.

After the last part of our Google keywords series, you should now have a spreadsheet of possible keywords for your site, sorted by “keyword difficulty”, with your best targets marked in bold. What these represent are your best opportunities to appear in high positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for these keywords. When a user searches on your chosen keyword, you want to appear as high in the results as possible.

What we’ve done so far is narrow down your possible Google keywords to the ones with the best ratio of competitive pages to search traffic. Lots of search traffic and few competing pages = big, fat target.

The next few steps take a bit of work and some creative thinking, but they’re worth it.

Keyword Relevance

Now we want to take the possible Google keywords we’ve identified, and find the ones that will work well with your site. Look at the bolded keywords in your spreadsheet – are any of them already prominent in your site? Is one in the title? Is one the subject of many pages/posts? Is one a synonym for something you write about frequently? Answer these questions for each of the top keywords in your spreadsheet, and mark the ones most relevant to your site’s content in red. Now we’ll check the answers more scientifically.

Current Site Indexing

Before we proceed, we need to make sure your site has been indexed by Google, especially if it is relatively new. You can check by following this link, and then substituting the URL of your actual site for “yoursite.com”:

Google search: site:http://yoursite.com

If there are no results for your site, you haven’t yet been indexed. If that is the case, take these two steps:

1. Go to Add Your URL to Google’s Index and add your URL. You’ll have to wait a while for it to show up, so the sooner the better.
2. If you have FTP access to your site’s files, make sure you have a file called robots.txt in your root folder. If you want your entire site indexed, its contents should read only as follows:
   

   User-Agent: *
   Allow: /

   If you don’t have access, don’t worry – this is generally set by default anyway.

If there are results for your site in the above search, you have already been indexed, which means we can now check the Google keywords you’ve marked in red.

Current Keyword Indexing

Return to the site-specific search, site:http://yoursite.com, and add your first keyword phrase (in quotation marks) to the front of the search query. For example, if the first red keyword in your spreadsheet is “merchant services”, search Google for “merchant services” site:http://yoursite.com.

If the results are accompanied by a message that “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 5 already displayed,” click the link to ”repeat the search with the omitted results included”.

Note the number of results. Near the top of the page, look for a line like this: “Results 1 - 6 of 6 from yoursite.com for “merchant services“. Create a new column in your spreadsheet, and type in the number of results next to your keyword. Repeat this process with all of those you’ve marked in red.

Now you know exactly how many times you’re indexed for each of these possible Google keywords. If you’re already indexed many more times for one or two, these are natural targets, since you’re mentioning them frequently already. If this happens, put a box around these in your spreadsheet to mark them.

The Dirty Work

If no natural targets emerge, start breaking up your keyword phrases, and repeating the search on the most important word. In the example above, you’d try just “merchant”. If you get more results, consider whether the references to “merchant” in your site could be tweaked to use the keyword “merchant services” instead or in addition.

If you’re still not coming up with results, look at your red targets, and try to think if you’ve used any synonyms on your site. Can you replace them with the keyword version, or add the Google keywords into the same content without disrupting the flow of your writing? If this is feasible for your site, repeat the above search using these currently-used synonyms. If you get results, mark the spreadsheet appropriately, with a note next to the results column indicating what synonym you searched on.

Repeat this until you get two to three keywords marked in boxes. Rank these according to difficulty, general relevance to your site, and current indexing, and determine a top keyword, a second and possibly a third. These will be your final targets.

Next time, we will integrate the selected Google keywords seamlessly and elegantly into your content and site design.

Google Keywords Part 4: Targeting

In the last entry in our series on Google keywords, we talked about assembling a list of potential keyword targets. Today we’ll move on to the next phase, deciding which keywords to target.

By now, you should have repeated the steps in part three until you have a long list of possibilities listed in your spreadsheet. Depending on your subject, try to get to a list of at least 20 possible keywords (remember that the term “keyword” refers to a word or phrase).

Now return to Firefox, and open up your “Google keywords” bookmark folder in tabs, so that all the pages are open in one window.

Google Keywords Research

Copy the first keyword from your spreadsheet.

First we’ll check for additional related terms based on search traffic. Go to the second tab in your Firefox window, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Paste in your Google Keywords in quotation marks, type in the CAPTCHA text if necessary, and click “Get keyword ideas” to see the results.

Next, in the “Match Type” dropdown menu, select “Exact”. Click the “Approx. Avg. Search Volume” header to sort by search popularity. Be sure to use the average search volume – this is a monthly average for the past year.

Look for additional related keywords with similar amounts of search traffic, and add these to your spreadsheet. Scroll down to “Additional keywords to consider” and look for additional related, popular keywords. Add these as well. Leave this window open, you’ll be returning here. If you are informed that you have been logged out upon returning, simply refresh the page.

Assessing the Competition

Click the “SEO for Firefox” icon in the bottom right of your Firefox window if it is grayed out, making sure it is activated. When your research session is over, be sure to turn if off again so that your IP isn’t banned for too much activity.

Now go to your third tab, Google search. Paste in your Google keywords in quotation marks, and click search. In the results, note all the additional information added by the SEO plug-in.

Look through the top 10 results for your keyword phrase, and check the first bit of added info, “PR”. This is the Google PageRank at the time of the last public update, denoting the “strength” of the page with a number from zero to 10. With some solid SEO and link building, you have a great shot at beating 0 – 2 ranked pages, a decent shot at 3 – 4, and 5 and up will be tough. Note an approximate average PR for your front page competition (figure the exact average if you like), and type this in the second column of your spreadsheet next to the keyword.

Next, go to the third tab, Wordtracker GTrends. Paste in your Google keywords and click “Hit Me”. If your keyword appears in the results, click the graph-style icon and wait for the query to complete. This returns the number of competing sites for that keyword, and the approximate daily traffic to the number one page. Note Wordtracker’s recommendations. If you get one green checkmark, type an X in column three of your speadsheet. If you get two checkmarks, this is an excellent target, and place two X’s in your spreadsheet.

Go to tab four, the Keyword Difficulty Check Tool. Paste and click submit. Note the difficulty rank that is returned – the lower the better. Type this number in the next column in your spreadsheet.

Sorting the Results

Repeat the above steps for all of your keywords. Now sort your Google keywords spreadsheet by the last column, the Keyword Difficulty rank, from lowest to highest. Look for the lowest difficulty rank, with the highest number of XX’s in the previous column, and the lowest average PR competition. These are your best opportunities to achieve a high ranking. Highlight these in bold and save your spreadsheet.

Next time, we’ll refine our list, and get more information about our selected Google Keywords. I know this seems like a lot of work, but stick with it – it will be worth it.