Like I have mentioned before, SEARCH ENGINES ARE BUSINESSES. This post is about three keyword principles search engines use, that you can exploit. These principles are great for search engine optimization, but can cause long periods of writers block if you try to apply them while you are writing. But, once you know which keywords are the most profitable for your business, these strategies can help you generate tons of free traffic from search engines, that will send your profits through the roof.

Keyword Prevalence, Keyword Proximity, and Keyword Percent.

1. Keyword Prevalence refers to where on the page your keywords appear. In the constant effort to deliver the content people are searching for, Google studied the places of a web page that people look at most. They found that people spend the most time looking at the top of the page... no duh :), followed by the bottom, and then the body, or the middle of a web page. It makes sense then for them to deliver the web pages where the keywords people are searching for are used in those places most often. Keyword Prevalence is the strategy of using your keywords in the most prevalent places of your website, Top, Bottom, then Middle. Before we can look at examples though it is important to understand the other two principles.
   
   
2. Keyword Proximity is where your keyword is, in relation to the other words on your site. This keyword strategy comes from the fact that phrases can mean different things, depending on what order the words appear. For example, if you say "car race", you are probably looking for a race. However when you say "race car" you probably want to see the cars in the race. The order of the words that people use in their searching tells a great deal of what they want to see. Some other examples are candle wax, and wax candle; cattle brand, and brand cattle; brand new car, and new car brand.
   
   The examples are endless. Search engines use proximity to explain what people are looking for. Keyword Nesting is the strategy that plays on this principle. It involves finding keyword phrases with multiple relevant keywords inside of it. This way you are maximizing the effectiveness of your keyword usage. (Keyword Nesting will be it's own post)
   
   
3. Keyword Percent is usually called keyword density, but the Three P's make the principle easier to remember. Keyword percent is actually a strategy that governs the use of keywords, while it tells what a page is really about. The keyword density that you want to shoot for is between 3 and 4 percent. This percentage range helps search engines do two things. First, it helps them tell what a page is actually about.
   
   The real topic of a page is going to be mentioned more than the other topics that appear only once in a page. For example, this post talks about cattle, cars, studies, keywords, search engines, colors, and more. But percentage wise "keywords" is going to dominate the density of this page. Ideally we want to end up with "keywords" being about 4% of the text of the page. The other benefit that Search Engines see from this range is a governing value.
   
   The dreaded title of "spammer" used to be reserved for rascally website owners who filled the content of their page with keywords, to generate traffic. By using black text on a black background they could made their web page relevant to all of the hottest keywords as many times as possible to get search engine traffic. Search Engines HATE this because it destroys their credibility. If someone searches for Britany Spears, and they come to a website about iPhones, they won't be happy. So search engines began using a 4% keyword density to keep spammers from manipulating the system.
   

Application of the 3 Keyword Principles

To avoid the worst kind of writer's block be sure to apply these principles, AFTER you have written the content of a page. Write it, and then go back and optimize the copy that you have to utilize these strategies. (Really quite intuitive title Search Engine Optimization is when you really think about it).

I like to start with Density. I find the total number of words on a page, and by using that I know how many times I need to use a keyword on a page to optimize my keyword density. For example, if I have 500 words on a page, 4 percent of that is 20, so I need to use my keyword 20 times on the page.

Next I move to Promenance. Of those 20 I want to use my keyword 10 times in the top of my content (the first 150 words or so), 7 times in the bottom of my content (the last 150 words or so), and 3 times in the body (the middle 200 words or so). These numbers are not hard standards, but almost arbitrary guidelines to illustrate the idea.

Finally, I look to find phrases that I can use to "nest" other keywords inside of. The phrase "children's learning toys" is a prime example of keyword nesting. If I use children's learning toys 20 times on my page out of 500 then 4% of my text is Children's learning toys, but I also have Learning, toys, children's toys, and children's learning. 4% of the time. This strategy helps you maximize the effectiveness of your content, without making your page sound jumbled and forced.

Remember, Search Engines want to make the end user happy. The better job you do of delivering what they want, the more likely search engines are to deliver the trafic you want.

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