How Keyword Density, Frequency, Prominence And Proximity Affects Search Engine Rankings Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005. In this article, I explain the difference between keyword density, frequency, prominence and proximity, and how they affect search engine rankings. Keyword Density Keyword density refers to the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page. The preferred keyword density ratio varies from search engine to search engine. In general, I recommend using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%. You may like to use this real-time keyword analysis tool to help you optimize a web page's keyword density ratio. Keyword Frequency Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page. The theory is that the more times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page, the more relevance a search engine is likely to give the page for a search with those keywords. In general, I recommend that you ensure that the most important keyword or keyword phrase is the most frequently use keywords in a web page. But be careful not to abuse the system by repeating the same keyword or keyword phrases over and over again. Keyword Prominence Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a web page. The general recommendation is to place important keywords at, or near, the start of a web page, sentence, TITLE or META tag. Keyword Proximity Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better. For example: How Keyword Density Affects Search Engine Rankings How Keyword Density Affects Rankings In Search Engine Using the example above, if someone searched for "search engine rankings," a web page containing the first sentence is more likely to rank higher than the second. The reason is because the keywords are placed closer together. This is assuming that everything else is equal, of course. You may like to read my article, "How To Find Out What Keywords Your Customers Are Searching With." In this article I show you how to capture your most targeted visitors with the search engines by discovering what keywords they search with. Case Study: Is Lycos InSite Pro Paid Inclusion Worth It? Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005. In this article I will show you the results of my test with the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion site submission program. I recently tested the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion system. InSite Pro offers guaranteed inclusion in the Lycos web index within 48 hours of submission, and full refresh of my web pages every 48 hours. Lycos InSite Pro offers two packages: * 1-250 Pages: $189.00/month * 251-500 Pages: $279.00/month I opted for the $279/month plan. I have about 500 pages of content across my network of sites and wanted all of them indexed in Lycos. The Results Lycos currently do not provide keyword, impression or click-through stats, although they do intend to offer them in the near future. So I checked my traffic stats according to my WebTrendsLive reports. I was shocked to find that Lycos only sent 41 visitors in the first 2 weeks of indexing my site. During the same period, Google sent me thousands of visitors. So I wrote to Lycos and asked if they could provide access to click through stats for my account. I wanted to double check, just in case my stats were wrong. They couldn't. So I also asked what I could change in my pages to get more traffic. Here's their helpful reply: Every entry in the Lycos index is created by automated software called a "spider." When a Web page is submitted to Lycos, the spider examines the full text of the page and determines relevant keywords based on its composition. The spider will pay close attention to the components of the URL, the TITLE tag, headings and subheadings, frequency of word use, location of words on the Web page, and the distance between words. If your Web page contains frames, our spider will be able to index the text in the <NOFRAMES> section only. We cannot examine the pages within your frame. Once our software has extracted this information, an abstract is created and stored in the Lycos index. Our search software ranks the search results by considering a combination of the factors listed above. Web pages with fewer than 100 words of text are less likely to be found in a Lycos search. Read that again in case you missed anything. Note that the Lycos spider pays close attention to the URL. So if you ever wondered if search engines took into account keywords in URLs, you now know the truth. Another important point is that your pages should contain 100 words or more, otherwise it's unlikely to be found in Lycos. For some unknown reason Lycos doesn't like my web pages. There's nothing new in their reply that suggests I have not optimized my web pages in the correct manner to achieve top rankings in Lycos. Thankfully, Google does like my pages, so I don't intend to change my pages just to cater to the Lycos ranking algorithm. In case you're wondering, I have canceled my Lycos InSite Pro subscription. But that shouldn't come as a surprise. ;o)
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Buy and Sell your text link ad space for FREE. Why pay a company a percentage of your income every month when you can sell it here for FREE? Text link marketing is here to stay and we are proud to offer this service for no charge to you. What is the catch? Read on... About The Author: Michael Wong is an internationally recognized internet marketing expert, and the author of a leading SEO book, numerous marketing articles, and reviews of marketing software and ecommerce software. Publishing Rights: You may republish this article in your web site, newsletter, or ebook, on the condition that you agree to leave the article, author's signature and photograph, and all links completely intact. Full instructions on how to copy and upload my photo to your server.  How To Select The Best Category When Submitting To Web Directories Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005. In this article I show you how to select the best category when submitting to a web directory, to give your site every chance of achieving top rankings for the keywords you want to target. Selecting the right category when submitting to a web directory can mean the difference between achieving top rankings and being lost in oblivion. Don't think that by paying for your submission, it guarantees top rankings. It doesn't! The only guarantee you will get is for a review within a certain time limit. If you don't select the right category, you might as well just be throwing your money out the window. Here's how you should find the best category to submit to, in order to give your site every chance of achieving top rankings for the keywords you want to target. Go to the web directory's home page and enter in the exact keyword phrase you're targeting in the search box. Let's use the Yahoo! directory as an example. A search for, "cheap Web hosting" returns this page of results: http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=cheap+web+hosting Take a look at the category link directly underneath the #1 listing, where it says: "More sites about: Web Site Hosting > Directories" The majority of the top listings are placed under this category. This tells you that Yahoo! considers this particular category as the most relevant for the keyword phrase we searched for. Click on the "Web Site Hosting > Directories" category link. This will take you to the sub-category in the Yahoo! directory. On the next page, take a look at the border at the top of the page that stretches across the screen, directly underneath the banner. It's in yellow. This indicates that the category is classified as commercial. Non-commercial categories are in blue. You will also find the listing that you clicked on located somewhere down the page. There you have it. That's how you select the best category when submitting to a web directory. You can use a similar technique when submitting to other web directories. For example, to submit to the LookSmart Directory, find the best category in MSN Search. The reason for this is because MSN search results include LookSmart listings and sends more traffic than LookSmart itself. The same is true for theDirectory Project index. In this instance, use the Google Directory. Good luck with your web directory submissions!
 
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