Keywords

[Paul Carmel]

Can you be penalized for having to many keywords by search engines? or is it more the merrier?

[marcus]

Paul,

are you talking about keywords in your website or on adwords?
you can't be penalised for having too many on adwords, of course - the more you have the happier they are

on your site, you definitely can be - there was an example somewhere on one of these threads a little while ago where someone had a phrase too often and got thrown off google more or less - search on recent threads with e words google and sandbox and I'm sure it'll turn up

I think about 3-5% maximum is recommended - ie each keyword should make up to 5% of the words in a page. In any event, if you use much more than this a page starts to sound like a search engine document rather than an interesting document.

I try and have about 5 or six keywords / phrases per page - hence why I have quite a lot of pages in my sites rather than the 'keep it simple' approach often recommended here. It's difficult to call one house a gite, a villa, a farmhouse and a rental property all in one page...

Incidentally a new site I am working on and only registered and published for the first time two weeks ago has already been identified by google for certain keywords, so they can be picked up quite quickly if you plan carefully - it doesn't have to take months as has been suggested

cheers

[marcus]

Paul,

Further to the above I came across a fine example of keyword saturation at qualitypropertiestorentinfrance.com
Look at the whole page not just the top half...
My guess is that they will be chucked into googles sandbox at some point.
Not generally the recommended approach.

Marcus

[Paul Carmel]

Hi Marcus,

See what you mean This is for our new site and not AdWords. Thank you for your input!

[paolo]

A couple of explanatory articles on keywords:

What they are and what you do with them:
http://www.marketingwords.com/articles/ ... words.html

How often to use them:
http://www.marketingwords.com/articles/ ... rmula.html

One thing to bear in mind - don't let the keywords get in the way of a good read. Too much repetition will put off your human readers. Try reading your text out loud to see if it sounds stilted, or get someone else to read it and give you their view.

[Paul Carmel]

Hi Paolo,

All good reading, Thanks!

[alexia s.]

Paul,
This is a strikingly original approach to Little Red Riding Hood. Can you show us Snow White?

[alexia s.]

ps No, that was a bad idea. Please DON'T show us Snow White.

[Giddy Goat]

I second that.

[Paul Carmel]

alexia,

It hadn't struck me as a Little Red Riding Hood scene .......you might be right though, hummmmmm
"Grandma what big *?!x**?!* you have"
"All the better for . . . . .(answers on a postcard please)

[craigkillick]

SEO (search engine optimisation) expert I work with suggests never have more than 11 keywords. I actually think keywords are not that important any more.

It's more about the content and the way Google can scan your pages.