SEO - Am I too dense?
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I’ve been working on my bandwagon-jumping discount code site this evening. One of the main incentives for doing this kind of site is the opportunity to get a lot of traffic purely through organic search. PPC affiliates have long been banned from brand name bidding but there’s not a lot merchants can do to stop affiliates optimising for their brand name.
So I’ve been working on the usual kind of things : slapping the merchant name all over the page, giving “helpful” hints about how the visitor might have misspelt the brand name, sticking in various permutations of the brand name and various synonyms for “discount”.
Crossing the line
It’s all making me wonder whether I’ve crossed the line from optimisation into keyword stuffing. Let’s face it the distinction is fairly small. It’s kind of like the distinction between “tax avoidance” and “tax evasion” : one is a legitimate way of using the rules to your advantage; the other is advantageously ignoring the rules. Either way the aim is the same but it’s hard to put your finger on where the line is crossed.
So it is with search engine optimisation. Where do you stop legitimately optimising and where do you start stuffing keywords? I’ll assume that dodgy old tricks like white-on-white text are too obviously dumb to even warrant discussion.
Learning to read
One way to distinguish is to try reading your own copy as if you were a regular visitor to the site. Chances are that it’s going to sound a bit stilted with all your keywords shoe-horned in there but if it still makes sense and doesn’t scream out “I’m a shopping list of keywords” then you’re probably still on the right side of optimisation.
Another favoured technique is to use software to analyse the keyword density of your pages. This technique is particularly favoured by the producers of keyword analysis software!
Most serious SEO experts would caution against relying too heavily on this kind of software. After all, how do the people who make the software know precisely what the search engines are looking for? They can only use trial and error research the same as the rest of us. Search engine algorithms are being tweaked all the time. Trying to second guess which change on the page lead to which change in the rankings is pretty much guaranteed to introduce a large margin of error.
If a piece of software really was able to guarantee a rise in search engine position it would sell like hotcakes. Everyone would end up using the same techniques and any advantage would soon disappear as all your rivals will be producing almost identical pages to your own.
The way forward
Which leaves us with guesswork, patience and skill. In my quest to leave the day job I’ve thought that I could read up on everything I needed to know about affiliate marketing, apply it and be successful. I’m realising now that it’s not just knowledge that’s required but skill as well and skill is something you can’t be taught, you need to practice until you can do it without thinking. It’s depressing because there’s no short cut, no easy win, no get-rich-quick. But it’s inspiring too precisely because it’s tough - anything that’s worth doing is going to be hard work and the sense of satisfaction at succeeding is going to be all the greater.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Great post title
I don’t think you need to worry about that, I have directly targeted brand names in domains as well as content.
I don’t see what they can do about it, what are they going to do, ask you to stop your favorable comments / reviews… don’t mention them again?
If they shut you out of their aff program, make the commentary negative and recommend a ’superior’ rival company / product instead.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Oh yeah I look for density of around 8%, but always make sure it reads sensible. I don’t use synonyms in post, and avoid stemming, i.e. just hit that one keyword as much as poss. Do another post for synonyms. IMO brand names are easier to hammer than generic keywords as there are so many “opportunities injection”.
March 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I think when targeting a specific page you should be aware of keyword density, otherwise just write as you would without trying to smother the page in the same word. Try to link bait if you can, although might be difficult in this area?