Should I put the keywords I want to rank for at the top?

Marketing
21

You’re making a lot of assumptions based on your interpretation of a blog post. The definition you’re assigning to boilerplate and common are not the definition those words have in the dictionary. Don’t let the badge go to your head. There is very little certainty in SEO.

The only people to be taken seriously are those who are conducting controlled experiments that eliminate other factors in order to test a specific hypothesis. Like aspen used to do for us at SPF years ago. Even then, you have to consider there might be other unknown explanations for whatever results are obtained.

22

He’s drunk with power, Dan :smiley:

23

SEO is a tricky beast, and as this thread shows no one knows exactly how to ensure their site will improve in rankings. There are best practices which should be followed and progress can then be tracked.

  1. In relation to keywords there is no need to constantly state the keyword over and over again. Make sure there is around a 5% ratio of the keyword within the text and utilize the keyword in meaningful ways (just don’t make up a sentence to use the word).
  2. Make sure the structure of your site. Do all your pages have a meaningful URL? Are all the page titles unique and relevant?
  3. The best way to optimize fast is to do so locally. Some keywords are much easier to achieve #1 ranking for if they include a specific region, etc…
  4. Look into your competitors. Doing research on the sites who are ranking higher can also give you more information about how to help your own rankings. Look at their keywords, meta tags, content, links, etc…
24

Ok, I have two comments to add.

One is on keyword density - i’ve posted these links before and they pretty much speak for themselves:
* http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/keyword-density-seo-myth/
* http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/how-search-really-works-the-keyword-density-myth.html
* http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/seo-myths-that-persist-keyword-density
* http://www.miislita.com/fractals/keyword-density-optimization.html

Summary: anyone who mentions a percentage for keyword density or states how many times a phrase should be in such and such places is full of hot air.

The second is about boilerplate context/text. This is something I deal with EVERY day when optimizing large enterprise level websites. My information on how the search engines define what is or is not boilerplate is from these resources:
* http://www.google.com/patents?id=dMKnAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage (from Google)
* http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edeepay/mywww/papers/www07-templates.pdf (from Yahoo - PDF)

Summary:

Boilerplate includes, for example, headers, footers, and navigational elements that may occur on multiple articles. In one embodiment, boilerplate is identified based on analysis of a plurality of related articles, for example multiple web pages within a web site. In another embodiment, boilerplate is identified based on analysis of a single article.
and

Common terms and phrases occurring on multiple related pages may not be boilerplate. For example, a site about astronomy may include the term “astronomy” in many or all pages, and that term is relevant and important.

So there are segments of page that make-up the “boilerplate” and terms within content, where the frequency may signal boilerplate content.

Hope that helps.