To cut right to the chase, here is SEO writing done wrong (opens in a new window).
There is an abundance of information explaining how to write well for search engine optimization. Not just how to optimize in the technical sense, but how to write well for people while maximizing search exposure. Tonight as I was looking for information on small business mobile apps I stumbled across an article that jumped out at me as a great example of how not to write for SEO. Let me explain why what you see is so bad… it wasn’t written to be read by a human. Every other sentence starts with “small business CRM.” It’s so painfully evident that they are just trying to rank for that term that it makes clumsy reading for the person actually looking at it. BTW… they don’t rank well for the term so I guess justice is served.
A few quick stats:
- In general, acceptable keyword density for is between 1 – 3 percent (not a hard and fast rule, some do put it a little higher). On the article I read, the phrase “small business CRM” has a keyword density of 3.34% and occurs 58 times. While not ridiculously out of the park as a percentage it’s still high, which can look like spam to search engines.
- “Small business CRM” appears no less than 6 times in the first paragraph and the phrase “small business” occurs 10 times!
- Between every paragraph (but the last one) is a one line paragraph which always includes the phrase “small business CRM.”
You get the idea, this is garbage reading at it’s best because it was written to try to rank for a certain phrase and not for easy human consumption. If you are going to write, do so for people first, then implement good SEO practices. You can write elegantly, logically and in an optimized manner without sounding like a machine. Remember, SEO simply exists so they can find you.
If you want to get a better understanding of how to write well for people and search engines read Copyblogger’s article “On Page SEO“.
About Scott Ellis
