SEO Tycoon

**scorpionagency** · 08:58 AM

Thread split off from This one

Well, I have to agree with everything Adam said with the exception of: "5.) Ignore most of the other advice you are about to receive:"

Granted there is a lot of hype out there and a high majority is just crap, there are still a few good suggestions you can build on. Always keep an open mind, but more importantly use common sense & supporting research to back-up a theory.

1.) After a brief look at your site we found that your Keyword Vs. Content density focuses on these 5 words:

Christian 4.1%
Search 2.25%
inline 1.64%
Idstryfe 1.64%
Frames 1.64%

2.) Your meta Keyword tag supports the top 2 "Search, Christian"

3.) you rank #9 on the first page of Google for the Term "Christian Search"

4.) The term "Christian Search" is searched for an average of 133-160 times per day throughout the combined top 3 engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo)

5.) You lack image & hyperlink alt/title tags

Here's a few suggestions just to get started on tweaking. That is If "Christian Search" is the phrase you want to get closer to the #1 spot in:

Add Alt/Title tags to both images & hyperlinks for added keyword support.
Tweak your content a bit to get both "Search" & "Christian" as close to 5% as possible (DO NOT go over 5%, this may be construed as search engine spamming)
Consider a re-design of at least the landing page (Home Page)
Consider Content rich (SEF) Search Engine friendly Doorway Pages targeting other relative phrases. (Keep in mind that the phrases must at least relate to what you do, otherwise they also can be construed as irrelevant spamming of the engine.)

We have written hundreds of articles on internet marketing, you are more than welcome to research us as well.

We wish you the best of success & hope that our short (Personal Opinion) was helpful.

Scorpion Agency

**gringo** · 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scorpionagency

Tweak your content a bit to get both "Search" & "Christian" as close to 5% as possible

Why on earth aim for some arbitrary keyword density constant that some seo 'guru' made up? I pity the poor programmer at any sophisticated search engine who codes a rule as clumsy as "if KD = 5% then rank higher" because their days of employment there would be numbered (at 5 probably).

If you were a librarian and somebody asked you to recommend a book on subject 'x' would you calculate the keyword density of 'x' in all of your potential offerings (assuming that you had the time to)? You would be ill-advised to as KD has no bearing on a person's satisfaction with the content they read. Are you more satisfied with content that has KD=5% than content that has 4 or 6? I'm not.

Not only is it nonsensical to aim for a constant, there is no evidence of it doing any good. How could you possibly know the the google/msn/yahoo/etc developers like 5%?

It's alt/title attributes. Alt tags don't exist and title tags are something else.

EDIT: Sorry if I sound a bit snappy, it's just that the whole keyword density nonsense gives me the red fog. Welcome to WMT!

**ADAM Web Design** · 09-10-2007, 07:00 PM

Amen to that, gringo.

Scorpion Agency: without getting into a lot of detail, you're going to find that the things you posted here will thoroughly be ripped apart and shown to be silly and outdated thinking (e.g. rank checking.)

Now...you're new here, and I think you really tried to help. You at least tried to put some thought into this. So I won't do to you what I would normally do...this time only. But I will say that this is precisely the type of thing I was referring to by "bad advice".

**scorpionagency** · 07:06 PM

Nice come back actually Gringo, it seems that we now have a debate.

The 5% is a 2 sided coin obviously. The beauty of debates is that you get 2 individuals in relative fields that have conducted research & came up with different results for a collaborative answer, Thus setting what some may call a Standard.

1st doorway attempt: In my personal research I submitted 3 doorway pages that were content rich with a 7%-9% specific key word density. Granted after 7-14 days these pages ended up in the top 10 (1st page of google). 7-14 days later they were bumped from the index entirely.

2nd Doorway attempt: This time I bumped up the keyword density to a 13%-15% for all 3 pages & made sure the pages keywords reflected a variation of my main site content (Trying to trick the engines this time into thinking they were simply additional pages to the main site theme, yet focusing on individual product lines).

Again same result, indexed within 7-14 days & dropped after an additional 7-14 days.

3rd Doorway Attempt: at this point I have learned a little from the first 2 attempts. I focused on keeping my keyword density under 5% & over 3%, Continued using an added target phrase as in the 2nd attempt targeting a specific product. I also added alt & title html Tags to both the hyperlinks & images. These pages indexed within 7-14 days & 2 of these pages still remain on the first page of google for there search terms 2 months later.

(Note: my experience with this may be unique, as we know everyones results may vary, However my personal Opinion on the matter is that somewhere between 5%-7% density a spamming red flag comes up in the mathematical algorithms.)

As far as the alt & title tags go: the alt tag simply provides an alternative text if an image does not appear, while the Title tag tells what the link/page in reference is about in a short sentence (Normally 5-20 words from what I have seen on the average).

The debate on whether Image tags such as Alt/Title actually help has been going on for a long time. Myself, once again (Personal Opinion) leans towards Relevance simply based on how a mathematical algorithm works.

(Note: I have read a lot of articles on the subject and found different theories which motivated our own research. I must encourage anyone reading this post to always conduct your own research "If possible". Basing research off an article you read or worse an article you read that they wrote about an article they read is all he said she said.)

In conclusion: I would love to hear your personal research & testing to aid in any further investigative research we may be needing to do ourselves.

**gringo** · 09-10-2007, 07:31 PM

To summarise your testing, you:

- changed something
- observed what happened next

This is not a good testing model. Given that you (or anyone) can't even identify all the factors that influence ranking, you certainly can't isolate them so that you are sure that this effect was definitely caused by that one change.

I sang in the morning and it rained in the afternoon. Hmmm.

So the testing is faulty, the theory actually makes no sense (why should 5% be thought of as ideal - is this how you yourself judge how well a document matches a search?), there is no evidence and there is no trusted source (e.g. Matt Cutts or equivalent search engine developer).

I'm open to the possibility of many theories being true, but this one (and its basis) doesn't have much going for it.

I didn't disagree with everything in your first post though. I thought this bit was good:

Quote:

Originally Posted by scorpionagency

Well, I have to agree with everything Adam said

**scorpionagency** · 09-10-2007, 07:50 PM

Your analogy seems to be a little off topic, however I have offered the testing I have done to support my theory as far as active failure & success attempts.

While going from failure to success may seem like unsupported evidence to some, the fact remains that the testing in the end produced Evident positive results (Unmeasurable or otherwise).

I am now simply asking if anyone else has any supporting research or testing to support Otherwise?

I was hoping to keep the debate going a while!

(Please Note: that this was meant to be a debate combining "Personal" research from 2 or more parties in order to come up with a solution "Or at least the acceptance to 2 theory's for further research & testing" - This was not meant to be a personal attack at any of the regulars authoritative presence here.)

I am open to any additional research anyone has done them self in this area (With the exception of he said she said scenarios).

**vangogh** · 09-10-2007, 07:52 PM

I've known a few people that try similar things as Eric and I think they had similar results. I don't know that the tests were purely scientific, but I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with them.

Do I think keyword density is the end all of seo? Absolutely not. But I would imagine it's in the algorithm somewhere and why not find out the limits of where you can push it.

**chrishirst** · 09-10-2007, 08:38 PM

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...tml#post452732

last couple of paragraphs.

**scorpionagency** · 09:28 PM

From referenced Forum link:

Quote:

If you have found you're site when searching for the address of your site, then it is now in the Google index, but there is too much competition from other sites, and yours isn't popular enough yet to be higher up in the rankings. Google uses hundreds of methods to rank it's sites, but one of the most important is having links into your web site, as from Google's point of view, if sites are linking to yours then your site is more reliable and popular than others. There are underhand methods of getting higher up the rankings, but thee are unfair and in the long term, may lead to having your site banned. Instead, concentrate on providing your visitors with good quality unique content which people will want to link to from their sites. If your web site is providing visitors with something that other sites aren't, then other webmasters and visitors will value your site and link to it from their own sites.

One your site is providing visitors with unique, interesting content, then submit your site to several directories, including Dmoz, which is of a high standard. Do not bother with small general directories as these tend not to bring you any visitors and are mainly a waste of time. It' not terrible to take part in a few link exchanges ("I'll link to your site if you link to mine"), as long as the links are there to bring you both traffic; the web sites are relevant and complimentary to both sites and also that you don't go over the top and participate in too many (10 relevant, complimentary link exchanges is almost definitely enough for most sites).

I agree with inbound linking.... My main site only has 3,400+ inbounds showing in the overall 5 engines combined (Link Popularity Test: Widexl.com)

I only have 1 link pointing to my research / test doorway pages though (From my main site footer) & multiple outbound links in the form of navigation. So there is not really much inbound link support to the doorway itself. Ok, I'll post one of my product targeted test doorways as an example along with the keyword phrase:
(Please note that this link was placed merely for supporting reference to the debate)
http://www.scorpionagency.com/html/u...c_website.html

<~This doorway targets a USMC Military Website Template with the Key phrase being "USMC TEMPLATE". Now granted that search phrase only seems to be registering 5-15 hits per day (Its a test page) with a focus on keyword density between 3%-5% along with image & hyperlink alt/title tags to analyze the affects of overall ranking. The page is #1 in Google for the term.

Unless the Authoritative presence of my root URL is directly influencing the doorway with one inbound link, I'm not sure that the inbound link theory plays a part for this particular doorway. (Of course I could be wrong).

Now the fact that it is a sub-page from the root index along with supporting outbound links back to the root & various sub-index pages may play a roll in the equation (Again its speculative).

The second to last paragraph on the referenced forum post was about Google page rank. again I agree it should NOT be Used as a measuring tool..

Quote:

Whatever you do, remember that you should aim to bring in traffic from a web site, rather than bothering with PageRank - the green bar in the Google toolbar (if you have the toolbar that is). PageRank used to be a useful way of checking the popularity and even the reliability of a we site, but it's been widely abused and is now little more than useless. It doesn't guarantee traffic/visitors to your web site, neither does it even guarantee where you're web site will be placed in search engine rankings, since Google uses more than 100 methods to evaluate web sites.

(Others may have different results with testing keyword density %'s in reference to what's sticking in the index & what's labeled spam and bumped by a mathematical algorithm.)

I would assume that if the search engine developers disclosed all their mathematical algorithm secrets it would make manipulation just that much easier knowing them all.

I am still seeking others that have done similar tests to see what results they have had.

**ForrestCroce** · 09-10-2007, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gringo

Why on earth aim for some arbitrary keyword density constant that some seo 'guru' made up? I pity the poor programmer at any sophisticated search engine who codes a rule as clumsy as "if KD = 5% then rank higher" because their days of employment there would be numbered (at 5 probably).

I think there's probably an ideal range. I wouldn't try to guess either end of that range ... but if I'm looking for info on 'SEO' and Google knows about a page that has KD = 100 % it's probably not very useful. If every third word is 'SEO' it's probably a random word generator. On the other hand, you would think 0 % would mean no match, and as Chris pointed out, searching for "click here" shows a page that doesn't use either words as #1. And that's out of a billion results.

If I were coding a search engine, I might use keyword density as one of many factors in raising spam flags, but it probably wouldn't have much to do with ranking. Which boils down to I really don't think it makes any difference for most of us, for SEO.

On the other hand, I try not to use the same word over and over again ... trying to read or listen to that becomes tedious, redundant. I wind up with low keyword density because, frankly, I have a large enough vocabulary not to bore my visitors. But that's kind of like how "PageRank" can be a symptom of a good site, but not the cause.

**scorpionagency** · 12:50 AM

Interesting, on the "0" keyword spectrum of "Click Here". In Google, one of Adobe's sub-pages is in the #1 position where Neither Keyword is evident. However the page (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) still ranks #1 for the term.

I would have to assume that the 25,985,952 inbound links to that page plays a large roll in the ranking (Reference Widexl). I wouldn't assume that Google favors Large corporate conglomerates such as Adobe & dishes out any unjustifiable favors, therefore my guess would be that a high majority of those inbound links is one & or all of the following:

Text "Click Here" hyperlinked to the page
Alt Text "Click Here" in the (image) Markup
Title Text "Click Here" in the Markup

All of which would show reference to the page its directing to. of course "Click Here" itself is obviously not referring to the content of the page, However collectively say 1,000,000 inbounds links textually use the "Click Here" phrase, a mathematical algorithm may take that total # of references to the phrase in the equation thus predominantly ranking it #1 for the term.

This goes along with Optimized inbound linking strategies Using supporting alt/title tags.

Great input & definitely something I want to start looking deeper into with some of my current campaigns in testing now.

we now have a #1 rank (Apparently Via inbound link reference) and a #1 rank (Apparently Via Keyword Density). Both at an extreme enough end in order to produce the same ranking results with different approaches.

I guess I am looking at the small picture focusing simply on one element such as keyword density in this debate. A combination of the 2 extremes mentioned would prove to be a fairly solid & long lasting campaign. (Not to eliminate all the other aspects of SEO of course, it's just a statement

)

Thanks for the Input... Great stuff in this thread...

**vangogh** · 09-11-2007, 01:05 AM

Eric it's always going to come down to a combination of different factors as well as what your competition is doing. Looking at your example above for USMC TEMPLATE I found 776,000 results at Google, which isn't a lot. Searching for an exact match of the phrase "USMC TEMPLATE" yielded 491 results and an intitle: search left 2 pages in the results. Your page at #1 and one other page.

Inanchor: searches also showed low results.

There aren't that many pages attempting to opimize for the keywords USMC TEMPLATE and few getting links with related anchor text. Because of that on-page factors will likely play a larger role in what pages ranks best. And since links aren't being called into the equation as much for this particular query a factor like keyword density plays a larger role.

Chances are though that any of the ranking pages could rank above you quicker by driving more links to their page than they could looking for the precise density of keywords.

Still your research is interesting. I think it's possible there's an ideal density of keywords you can reach before tripping some filter. Knowing where that tripwire is might help in ranking low competition phrases while you're first gathering links. Still the odds are pretty good that a few targeted links will outweigh even a perfect keyword density.

**scorpionagency** · 01:45 AM

Steven, I have to fully agree with you. Utilizing all aspects of SEM/SEO is essential to any campaign. I suppose I am simply trying to push the envelope as to what the Max supporting Keyword density limit may be in order to be an Optimal factor in its own niche.

Inbound links with supporting textual markup being its own niche is unlimited. However I have found it quite interesting myself as to the inner red flag workings of a search engine that seem to be tied in with keyword density.

I'm sure there are several factors to red flags, Even if we did uncover them all the developers would change it up on us just to stay one step ahead (Eliminating any Monopolizing advantages).

In Conclusion: The USMC TEMPLATE page proved that (In my test) the staying Under 5% aided in a Purely keyword driven site to rank adequately against other keyword driven sites. As you pointed out, if some where to add inbound referencing links it may alter the positioning.

The thing that got me was at 7% how my pages simply drop out of the index. I may have to fire up another domain name & test the 5.1%-6.99% Range to try & get closer to the limits without getting dropped.

It seems some of this has strayed from the original thread post, So this is where I say thank you for the input & I hope some of this thread has aided the Creators original question.

Good Luck!

**chrishirst** · 09-11-2007, 09:07 AM

Thread split

**Learning Newbie** · 09-11-2007, 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scorpionagency

Inbound links with supporting textual markup being its own niche is unlimited. However I have found it quite interesting myself as to the inner red flag workings of a search engine that seem to be tied in with keyword density.

I'm sure there are several factors to red flags, Even if we did uncover them all the developers would change it up on us just to stay one step ahead (Eliminating any Monopolizing advantages).

Google Miserable Failure. #1 result used to be George W Bush's official bio, but the algorithm changed and too many links with the same text sets off a flag now.

**scorpionagency** · 09-11-2007, 04:08 PM

Interesting, Thats handy information. I'll look more into that one to. Thanks

**vangogh** · 09-11-2007, 07:47 PM

John I don't think that's in all cases. It was algorithmically done, but it's not an algorithm that runs all the time.

Also not too long after the whitehouse pages used the word failure and started ranking again for phrases around that word. I think it's no longer working now.

**scorpionagency** · 09-11-2007, 08:04 PM

Steven - You may not have meant it like this, however it sounds as if maybe, just maybe there are a few Algorithms that are cunningly used for the soul purpose of deceiving individuals who research algorithms (In order to throw the predator off its scented trail.)

Kind of a planned imbalance in order to restore balance technique? (This of course is just going by the temporary effects & statement that the site in question is starting to rank again for the words)

I'm probably reaching a little too far on this post, however if there is any accuracy to it, it would explain a lot & make for a great article with more supporting evidence.

**vangogh** · 09-12-2007, 04:42 AM

That wasn't quite what I meant, but it's an interesting thought.

With the 'miserable failure' search what happened was a bunch of bloggers who didn't like George Bush linked to his page at the whitehouse.gov site with 'miserable failure' as the anchor text.

Because Google places a lot of weight on the anchor text of the link the page ranked #1. It's that same reason why the Adobe page ranks for 'click here' There are a lot of links with the anchor text 'click here' pointing to that page.

It's called Googlebombing.

Naturally George Bush wouldn't want to be ranked #1 for miserable failure, though many clearly think he should rank there. I think what Google did was write an algorithm where the weight of the anchor text gets filtered if the words don't appear on the page. That's why when the word 'failure' was later used on the page it was ranking again.

Matt Cutts has stated it was all algorithmically run, but not by an algorithm that runs all the time. The 'miserable failure' search wasn't the only case of Googlebombing. I also suspect that their was more human intervention going on that anyone at Google will care to admit.

By the way someone was arrested in Poland a recently essentially for Googlebombing and is facing 3 years in prison. He managed to rank a web page from the official site of Polish president Lech Kacynski for a word that will surely getting covered by asterisks if I type it here. Think along the lines of viagra or read this post.

**scorpionagency** · 10:02 PM

I would still have to ask myself though, if Google did tweak the algorithm to exclude red flag googlebombing anchor text to be excluded unless the referenced page included the keywords itself, How does that explain the the Adobe Sub-page in the #1 spot for the term "Click Here" when its no where to be found on the page? I even checked for image anchors on the page itself to make sure none were hidden anywhere.

Another Google mystery, the Adobe page just hasn't been filtered yet, Or another supporting possibility that it was a manually triggered algorithm in the attempt to regain balance?

Interesting Poland read you posted there