by Irene Lizarraga

Created on: November 26, 2009   Last Updated: August 12, 2010

Writing web content that is SEO friendly is a must-have skill for marketers and website owners trying to promote their website on the Internet. Search Engines rate the relevance of a page for a certain keyword based on that keyword's density on the page text, and by its relative importance compared to other elements of the same page. If you want the millions of users that find content through Search Engines to find your website, you will need to learn to write compelling web content that sounds natural but has the right keywords on the right bits of the website, such as the headers. You will also need to weave those keywords on your text so it doesn't sound repetitive, but their keyword density is increased.

Keyword density is simp ly the number of times that specific keyword or sentence appears on the page, compared to the total amount of words in that page. Good SEO optimized content will have a keyword density of between 3 to 5 percent, marking that page as relevant for said keyword without looking stuffed. After reading this, it may feel tempting to just endlessly repeat the chosen keywords within the text, but that strategy is due to backfire for two reasons. First of all, if the keyword density looks unnatural Search Engines will consider the content suspicious and possibly penalize it. The second negative consequence will be that your visitors won't find your content easy to read and will probably leave the page, negating any potential positive result from SEO.

Search Engines also consider the relevance of the keyword compared to other elements in the page. Words within headlines tags or in bold will have more importance than just plain text. At the same time, words in the first paragraph or first sentences will also be considered more relevant than those in the body of the article. Since human visitors will also consider bolder or bigger text to be more relevant, it's important to keep them in mind when writing and not overuse these tags just for slightly better SEO optimization. Excess bold text, or using styles to disguise H1 tags to display as normal text will make the Search Engines frown upon your website, since their goal is to display to their visitors the best answers to a query, and anything that tries to trick them is generally penalized or ignored.

Combining a good, natural keyword density with the right positioning and marking of the keywords within the document will make your content more optimal for search engines. The way Search Engines rate the relevance of a keyword for a page mimics the way a human being would interpret it, from visual cues about importance to what parts of a text a human reader would pay more attention to. This is done so Search Engines can offer the results that are more relevant to human beings using them. Satisfying human visitors is at the core of the Search Engines strategy, and should also be the focus of your content. It's important to remember that the end goal is providing your human visitors with useful information that is entertaining and nice to read. Sometimes it's worth sacrificing a bit the SEO optimization in exchange for easier reading flow and a better reader experience.

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