4.6 Why Keyword Focus & Density Matters

The topic of this article is especially important, as it is hotly debated: why focus & density matters. While some would state why keyword focus & density matters - because it is one of the best ways to optimize your page for traffic - other would challenge that premise altogether. There are essentially two things which will be used to rank your blog - your onpage factors and your offpage factors. The bulk of your onpage score will quite simply be determined by your keyword focus and density. This is why keyword focus & density matters.

Of course, your offpage factors should also be optimized for keyword focus, too. For instance, if you're planning to optimize your blog for the keyword "Sunflower Seeds," you will want to use the keyphrase "Sunflower Seeds" in the anchor text of all of your links. This means that the title of your link in any directories you submit to will say "Sunflower Seeds." This is arguably a far more important form of optimization; however, it is still an argument for why keyword focus & density matters, but simply from an offpage perspective about focus, rather than density.

For onpage factors, you will want to consider your title, your headers, and your keyword focus and density for the body of your site. Before you even create your blog, you will want to figure out what keyword you should optimize for. An easy way to do this is to determine how many people search for your keyword. You can use overture's inventory tool to do this. You can then compare that number against the amount of competing pages by Googling that keyword in quotations. You may also want to check out competing pay-per-click bids through your Google Adwords account if you plan to publish Adsense ads.

Once you have selected a good keyword or set of keywords for your blog, you will then want to optimize your blog for these keywords. You can do this by inserting these keywords into your blog entries at a density of approximately 1.5% -- or six uses per 300 words.

Working on your blog's keyword focus and density - including both onpage and offpage factors -- is crucial because it will ultimately determine how much traffic you receive. Additionally, optimizing onpage factors for keywords that are searched for less than 1000 times may allow you to capture an entire search group without actually competing.