Paul Rone-Clarke SEO Expert is happy to share the following.

Of the many things that have changed in the past 18 months regarding effective search engine optimize agent, one that’s been overlooked by most in the industry is establishing a specific keyword’s relevance on a particular URL. (The technical factors to do with hosting etc. are to be found here)

This is an understandable oversight. We are, quite rightly told, that the main metric for successful optimization has nothing to do with ranking for specific keywords but entirely to do with how much money you or your client and making on the bottom line. And that’s as it should be.

However, to make that money it’s still often the case that you need to rank for specific keywords.

Arrgghh – it’s a circular argument. You may have trained yourself or your clients to be a little more blasé when micro analysing the relative position of lists of words and phrases, but the fact is they still do matter.

Despite my continuing efforts, most of my sites still get just under 50% of their traffic direct from Google. This site is an exception where I’ve managed to get that down to under 20% as most of the traffic comes from SEO blogs, forums and social media sites. But that’s taken time, and Google is still the single biggest contributor to my site’s visitor levels (Facebook is second if you are interested). So let’s just deal with the world as it is and get our site some love from Google for some words and phrases that are relevant to our niche.

Rose Tinted Spectacles

It used to be so easy. Before Google you create a page and maybe put hundreds of words of hidden text. Using a font colour the same as the page background colour – or hiding text behind images or “off page” were the 3 most common ways to do this.

Then Google introduced “links” (and 80% of the SEO market quit) “How can we get another site we don’t own to link to you, that’ll never happen” people said…

At that point spamming your own site with content full of the phrase you were trying to rank for and then pointing as many anchor text links at it as possible worked. It worked for years.

2001 – 2011 saw no real drop in this methods effectiveness if the IM or SEO specialist took sensible steps and wasn’t too overt with the spam.

One thing this method WAS NOT… was “short term”. In those 10 years people made fortunes, retired, came out of retirement and wrote books and videos telling others how they had made their fortunes… doubled their money… and retired again.

If anyone says effective SEO is short term? You can be pretty sure you’re talking to someone who wasn’t there.

Moving With The Times

Late in 2011 resource sites penalized for keyword density of over 3%. In the past we’ve looked at how you work out this density and the common mistakes that many in Internet marketing make, so I won’t go through that again. The details are here.

So, how would you promote a page to rank for a particular keyword or key phrase?

There are four main elements we need to look at in 2014

SEO Specific Keyword Ranking In 2014

Keyword Density

This old chestnut. But it’s done in a slightly different way. A few factors to take into account here include thinking about the size of the article or blog post you are creating. To establish any sort of relevance without keyword spamming is probably going to take a little more content than it did in the past. Think 800 words is a minimum and perhaps 1500 words is a maximum.

Use the Google keyword tool to search for other relevant phrases. An important thing here is to filter these phrases to take out the appropriate words that often seen alongside the keyword or phrase you are actually looking to rank for. Using these words within your written articles will help establish relevance. The risk and balance here is to stop yourself from using your main keywords too often.

In the example I would take out “electric”, “propane” and a few other phrases and use those on their own throughout the article to density of not greater than 2% and preferably no more than 1%.

Do not prefix or suffix these words every time you use them with the keyword you’re looking to rank for. This will boost your keyword density well above acceptable levels.

Tagging

It’s as old as the hills, but it still works. While the hidden metadata at the top of your URL is of little value these days, the more visible attributes are still certainly very valuable. Title, “H” tags, image titles and Alt data all count. At the risk of repeating myself, remember again not to spam just the key phrase you are after, make it relevant and varied.

Inbound Link Sources

Look at who is already ranking for the words and phrases similar to those you are after. Don’t concentrate just on the exact key phrase but on as many as 10 others that are relevant to your niche. What sites are ranking for these terms? Would it be possible to get a link from the sites?

It’s an old white hat technique, but it’s still highly valuable.

In anything but the weakest of markets it’s unlikely that you will be able to gain enough links from enough different sites to rank effectively with these alone, but they do add a great deal of credibility, authority and derived relevance to your campaign. In afternoon spent getting four or five of these will normally pay dividends. If there aren’t many specific sites, then links from social media groups in your niche will help.

Anchor Text Links

As ever, anchor text links are vital. While sticking to lower percentages this method is still highly effective. It has been for more than 12 years and shows little sign of losing ground.

3-5% for any one particular phrase is about the most you should go for. Member in that you’re not looking to target one particular phrase but perhaps a group of five or six.

When she worked out the appropriate structure of your on-site content and have an idea of how many links and of what type you need to rank, the actual nuts and bolts of how you do it will be largely up to you on a you’re skill set and possibly your tools. I’ll be looking specifically at how you action some of these ideas with automation over at ultimatedemon2.com in the next few days.

You may like:

• Technical factors that effect ranking
• How much content should I add to my website?
• What role does social media now play?
• The 2014 European Effective SEO Meet (London)
• 8 Free Resources To Kickstart Your IM Career

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