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Affiloblueprint On-Page SEO VS Wordpress SEO Recommendation
sheikh.ovais
Posts: 36
Joined: 21 Dec 12
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10 Dec 13 4:02 pm

Affiloblueprint On-Page SEO VS Wordpress SEO Recommendation

Hi there,

I've posted my first 30 articles on my site and as recommended in ABP I'm concentrating on Yoast for my on-page SEO. A few questions that came into my mind about Yoast's SEO recommendations were:
1. It flags as inappropriate to not use your keyword in the meta description.
(But what I learned in ABP was that, meta tags shouldn't be stuffed with keywords without any need.)
2. All of my articles that I've posted on my site so far mostly have a KW density below 1%, but the content is quite generic. However, Yoast highly recommends to increase it.
(What I found during my research is that KW density factor died years ago).

So what should I do now?
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aletta
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Joined: 09 Jul 06
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10 Dec 13 9:31 pm

 1) It's good to have your keyword in your meta description. Definitely don't stuff it with every single variation of your keyword, but try to at least mention it once.

The purpose of the meta description isn't so much to help your rankings, but to help your click through rate from the search engines. Search engines are more likely to use your meta description as the little snippet in the results pages if it is very closely relevant to the searched for term.

If you don't include your keyword in your meta description, it's more likely that the search engines will look elsewhere on your page for that little snippet of content, and you'll lose the chance to do a quick sales pitch for your site.

2) I wouldn't worry about the keyword density figure. I'm not sure whether Yoast is looking solely for your keyword phrase in its entirety, or if it counts fragments of it, and if it looks at synonyms as well. These all probably count towards your overall "relevancy", which is what keyword density is really all about.

Basically, people need to be able to tell that the page they've arrived at is relevant to the words they searched for. So you should try to fit your keywords into your title tag (this also helps your click thru rate from the SERPs) and your H1 headings, and probably at least once in the body of your page... but don't stuff it in where it doesn't naturally fit and read well.

In truth: If your content is actually talking about the topic that you're optimizing for, you will naturally be including your keywords and related words in your page anyway. If you have to FORCE keyword density, you should be questioning whether your content is truly relevant to that topic.

If your content is "generic" as you say, then it's really only relevant to generic keywords. You make your job a lot easier (both in terms of ranking AND converting visitors to buyers) if you can create content that is truly relevant to the search term to begin with.
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sheikh.ovais
Posts: 36
Joined: 21 Dec 12
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11 Dec 13 3:57 pm
It's good to have your keyword in your meta description. Definitely don't stuff it with every single variation of your keyword, but try to at least mention it once. If you don't include your keyword in your meta description, it's more likely that the search engines will look elsewhere on your page for that little snippet of content, and you'll lose the chance to do a quick sales pitch for your site.

That makes a lot sense, I'm going to implement that !

you should try to fit your keywords into your title tag (this also helps your click thru rate from the SERPs) and your H1 headings, and probably at least once in the body of your page... but don't stuff it in where it doesn't naturally fit and read well.

That's exactly what I do, I always put the KW in my articles' main headings, and quite often I use to put them in a few subheadings when relevant. And the KW also appears in the body a few times. But eventually, all of that ends with a KW density of about 0.4-0.7%.

If your content is "generic" as you say, then it's really only relevant to generic keywords. You make your job a lot easier (both in terms of ranking AND converting visitors to buyers) if you can create content that is truly relevant to the search term to begin with.

I might have mistaken with using the word "generic" (because of not being very good at English :-/), I actually wanted to say that my KW density is always low but my content is very much relevant to the topic. The reason (what I think) why KWs don’t much appear in my content naturally is the “long tail” factor.
Example: When my KW is “Best acne treatment for teens”, it is quite difficult to repeat it in the body or the subheadings more than two or three times.

At last, I’d like to ask one more question.
Can using a variation of your main KW in the article bring weight to your main KW? I mean when my main KW is “how to get rid of blackheads”, what will happen if I use KWs like “get rid of blackheads naturally”, “best methods to get rid of blackheads”, etc. in my article? OR should only be the exact KW used instead?

Hope you got the idea of what I’m trying to say.
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Site Admin
aletta
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Joined: 09 Jul 06
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11 Dec 13 9:25 pm

 All those examples include "get rid of blackheads", so they're pretty much your exact keyword anyway -- just missing the "how to".

I think synonyms are fine to use, and probably good to use, if it helps your content read naturally. Natural is the key here. I'm not sure if Google have started penalizing pages that appear to be keyword stuffing, but it is not out of the realm of possibility now or in the future. So I would err on the side of caution and just do whatever sounds natural.
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