What is the optimium keyword density

For me, personally I don't give much importance to the "optimum keyword density". I prefer to write content that is optimized for visitors and use other methods to optimize the page.

But is my opinion misplaced? Does keyword density have a place in SEO? To find out I have created three more sites for testing purposes, each with slightly different keyword densities.

Other than having different keyword densities, they are all the same.

The first site has a keyword density of 3.76%

Click Here For Site Number One

The second site has a keyword density of 5.82%

Click Here For Site Number Two

The third site has a keyword density of 1.89%

Click Here For Site Number Three

I think this is going to be one of the more interesting experiments because it's one of the most contentious issues within the SEO industry. There are many camps and many opinions about keyword densities, so this hopes to settle them once and for all.

Depending on the results, I may expand this experiment further in the future.

Much More To Test

I've done a number of experiments so far, and the resulst have been encouraging - mostly validating current knowledge. It's great fun to do the experiments and really understand how the digital minds of Google and other search engines work.

For some odd reason though, I've still not been indexed by Live.com or Yahoo.com - so there is something to consider...Blogger doesn't get indexed by these two search engines very easily - but on the other hand, my Wordpress.com blog has been indexed.

Coming up, I'm going to be testing keyword densities, bolding and stylizing keywords, changing the meta tags around, messing around with the perfect title length and format and so on.

There's so much to do!

Checking anchor text

Now here's an interesting qustion. Does anchor text really affect the ranking of a website? We are often told and lectured to by SEO guru's that all the ranking juice is in the number of inbound links, and critically what anchor text is used.

So for this experiment I've created three new sites and am going to use a range of linking methods to establish which ones rank higher and why.

First up I'm going to see what happens when you use plain old 'Click Here' which is used so often when linking to a website:

Click Here

Next one, is what the SEO gurus always tell us, "use your keywords in the anchor text" so, here we go:

Grogerny Denox

And last, but by no means least, because it's equally important that we try it out, using the full URL to link to your site:

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seo/grogernydenox-3.htm

Once again, we must wait with baited breathe to see the outcome of this experiment!

Good Indexing Now

Google is going pretty well with indexing now, all the experiments are indexed, but not all the pages from the experiments, but I can finally start seeing some results again.

Live and Yahoo still are not picking up this blog which proves that blogger.com is not good if you want to get your site indexed quickly. I know I have the inbound links, but they are just not interested.

I will begin doing some more experiments this week, interspersing content with experiments.

Google Indexing

Google has finally decided to take some notice and index my blogs. I think this is because I have linked to it from so many different places. Unfortunately they are still not indexing the experiments so I think I will have to continue to build up the number of inbound links to convince them that this is a good quality website and that will help the experiment links get indexed.

If after a week or so the experiment pages are still not being indexed, I have considered setting up a number of other blogs and each one linking to a single experiment page and each page would be on a separate domain.

This is not an ideal solution because it creates more work for me and it also brings up the case that not all blogs are created equal and some might hold more juice with the search engines than others.

This would in turn potentially skew the results.

But let us see what happens. I will continue posting content here without links until the current experiment pages are all indexed.

Attempting To Get This Blog Indexed

I'm still trying to get this blog re-indexed. I've added a link to this site from a number of other websites that I own in the hope that more inbound links will cause this blog to get indexed quicker.

I have also pinged it to a number of services using pingoat.com simply to try and build up the number of inbound links. So far it doesn't seem to be working.

I just don't know why it's not indexing this blog. Even the other search engines are not picking it up. Could it be that it links to web pages that contain utter nonesense for content?

How To Get Indexed In Google

Not too sure what's going on here. I chose Blogger to post my experiments and results because I thought it would get indexed by Google pretty quickly and hence get my SEO experiments indexed equally quickly.

Now the strange thing is, when I first started, the blog was indexed by Google. It showed up and even the first two experiments were indexed - I know because I was playing around with them.

But after a few days the listings disappeared from Google and I can't quite work out why.

I'm thinking it could be something to do with the fact that I'm linking to the same website over and over again in each post - could be seen as spamming. In which case the solution is to alternate the days I post links or even have a break in posting links and post more content like this to make it appear less spammy.

To see if this theory holds any water, I will post a few days of content with no out going links to find out if this helps with my seo experiment.

Images And SEO

It is said that using the alt attribute in the image tag can help with your search engine rankings. It is also said that you should name your image file the same as your keyword.

But is this really sound advice. Today I've set up many different pages to find out what is the optimum format for an image.

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/spundiktribble-1.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/spundiktribble-2.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/spundiktribble-3.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/spundiktribble-4.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/spundiktribble-5.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/spundiktribble-6.htm

The Title Attribute

SEO gurus often tell us to use the title attribute for certain tags because it helps increase the number of times a keyword is shown on a page. Having never tested this before and with no idea if this is really the case I have decided that this experiement will check to see if the title tag really does help.

All it does is take two websites with the exact same setup, one has the title attribute and one does not.

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/eschrowebundle-1.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/eschrowebundle-2.htm

Do You Need Your Keyword In Your Filename

Today's experiment is going to revolve around how you name your file and whether it is necessary to include your keyword in the file name. It will also look at whether the format of your file name plays a part in the ranking of your page.

I have created four files. Each has a different file name format, but the content on each page is the same in terms of SEO - albeit different randomly generated text is used to avoid a duplicate content penalty.

So without further ado, here are today's experiements...

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-12.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/mateoric_fingle.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/mateoricfingle.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/mateoric-fingle.htm

What Tag To Use For Your Heading

This experiment comes from the age old question that asks what is the best Tag to use for your main site headline.

I have created four different pages (each with unique random generated text) and used different tags for each of the titles. What I'm looking for is to find out if the H1 tag really has as much clout as SEO experts say it does.

So here's the links

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-8.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-9.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-10.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-11.htm

Now let's see how that pesky H1 tag performs!

Do You Really Need The Keyword In Your Title?

For today's experiment, I want to determine whether or not having your keyword in your title really makes a difference.

I have set up 3 new experiment pages each having slightly different attributes. One has the keyword in the title, one has the keyword in the body and one has the keyword in the title and body.

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-5.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-6.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-7.htm

Let the fun begin!

What Is The Best Title Tag Format

In this experiment I will be using four different title tags.

1. Use a generic title that is often used by websites not optimizing their site
2. Use an optimized title tag that reads naturally to readers
3. Use an optimized title tag specifically for search engines
4. Use a title tag and a meta-title tag

The websites are located here:

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-1.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-2.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-3.htm

http://www.peterclaridge.com/seoplayground/experiment-4.htm

Can't wait to see the results!

The SEO Playground

This is the SEO playground where I play around with various factors to see what influences Google's ranking. It'll also cover Yahoo and MSN/Live.

I'm taking a scientific approach to this experiment and will be changing one variable at a time to hopefully bust a few SEO myths and improve my own SEO knowledge.

Wish me luck!