In the world of search engines, the frequency of keywords will play a very important role. As we previously discussed in the last section, each segment of your site should focus on a different keyword so that a variety of people who are looking for different things will be able directed to your site.
Let’s say you decide to write a blog and that you chose the keyword phrase Kentucky Houses for Sale. In terms of logic, it might seem beneficial to use those keywords as often as you can in the blog. Your first paragraph might read:
There has been a huge increase in the amount of Kentucky houses for sale. Because of the increase in Kentucky houses for sale, the sales prices for Kentucky houses for sale have dropped dramatically.
If you have been looking to buy one of the Kentucky houses for sale, now would be an excellent time because Kentucky houses for sale have never been offered at such a low price.
You may then continue your blog in that same vein because, you feel that a person who initiated a search using that phrase would be directed to your site, thanks to the strong relevance using it so many times created.
The search engine spiders would recognize that relevance and direct the searching party to your site. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
That one paragraph contained 68 words and the keyphrase was used 5 times. That means in one paragraph, it made up 7% of the content. In the complicated world of search engines, a keyword or phrase should only make up 7% of the entire document.
There was a time it was considered expedient to use a keyword or phrase as many times as possible. Once people began to understand how search engines worked, recognizing the relevance factor, they began doing what’s known as “keyword stuffing”. They would insert the keyword phrase into their content multiple times, and the search engines would of course respond by putting their site high up on the search results page.
As time went on, the people who program the spiders got smarter and thus so did the spiders themselves. Now, if a site uses a keyword or phrase multiple times throughout the content, this technique will actually cause them to discount that page and ignore it, lowering it in the rankings.
The spiders recognize that you are trying to trick them and they make you pay for it by pretending you don’t exist. This is the last thing you want to happen since the whole point of SEO is to get your pages ranked higher, not relegated to the back of the line.
When you are crafting your content, be careful not to overuse the keyword or phrase. Keep the frequency down to 7% to make the search engines happy and boost your chances of bringing your site to the searcher’s attention.