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Keyword Overload Can Kill a Web Page
Keyword overload can absolutely kill a web page, confusing both your
website visitor and search engines. So, “What is keyword
overload?” you may ask. There are two types of keyword overload
that occur regularly on websites all over the world. Let’s
discover what they are and why they occur.
The keyword overload phenomenon occurs in one of two ways. First,
in an effort to convince search engines that a particular web page is
about a specific thing, we use the keyword so much that the text looks
more like spam than it does good content. Yes, it is possible to
use a keyword so much that, not only does it look unnatural to website
visitors, it looks unnatural to search engine “bots” as well.
Second, keyword overload occurs when we have too many keywords we want
to emphasize on a given web page. Website visitors can not figure
out exactly what the web page is about – and neither can search engines.
When a search engine processes the web page and then compares it to
other similar pages, our page receives a low score because it really
ends up being about nothing specific at all.
Our first type of keyword overload is easily curable. You need to
make sure that a particular keyword does not appear more than 3-5% of
the time on a given web page. You can easily check this with
Microsoft Word. First, copy the text to a new Word document, mark
the block of text, then click Tools, Word Count and you will have the
number of words on the page. Next, do a search on the keyword
phrase in the body of text. Now, just do your regular percentage
calculation and you will know what is called “keyword density” for the
page. An even easier way to check your keyword density is to use
our
Keyword Density Analyzer, found
the
Optimization page at our website,
http://www.goldenwebs.biz.
The second type of keyword overload sometimes results when we either a)
can’t come up with good website content for each of our products and
services or b) we become lazy. There once was a client who
performed fifteen different services, but didn’t want to make the
website investment necessary to have the appropriate pages for each
service. The result was a couple of web pages that discussed many
services offered by the company. Website visitors did not get to
learn much about the services and search engine bots concluded that the
page was about a lot of a little, but not enough of any one thing.
The result was low and sporadic search engine rankings. Once the
client understood the problem, additional pages were added and the
problem was solved.
In reality, search engines have grown more savvy over the years and may
not be quite so keyword density-focused. However, this is still an
excellent guide to make sure you are not perceived as keyword “stuffing”
on a particular web page. Bottom line – just write good, focused,
keyword centric content and your web page will meet the needs of both
your website visitors and search engines. Happy writing!
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About the Author. Bill Golden, founder of Golden Web Design Services,
has grown up with technology since the early 1980s. As the first
“PC Guru” for a US Midwest Fortune 500 company, he directed a variety of
corporate development initiatives over a 17 year period. Bill then
managed a technical training company before starting his own consulting
practice in 2001, specializing in website development, marketing, and
search engine optimization. If you are interested in learning more
about how Bill can help improve your website rankings, you can reach him
at http://www.goldenwebs.biz.
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