SEO Porridge – Keywording for the Best Bowl!

wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/three-bears.jpg” alt=”” width=”255″ height=”302″ />If you have ever heard the children‘s story about the three bears, you will appreciate what we have to share today? If you recall, the papa bear, the mama bear and the little baby bear made up a little bear family? The baby bear is who we want to focus on today because we need to be baby bears when it comes to keyword optimization. The little bowl of porridge is just right and can fill us up without making us too full and sick.

Think for a second of keyword density as porridge, and then see if it makes better sense when related just like that old story from when you were a child.

The Papa bear said:

“For the best porridge, you can shop for porridge and compare porridge until you find the best porridge for your porridge needs. Porridge can be found at major porridge outlets, but sometimes the best porridge is the porridge you make for yourself. You know what you need after all.”

The Mama bear said:

Do you like bowls of steaming hot yummy porridge? Check out this website, and enjoy a bowl of porridge while you play our poker games. You can eat porridge while playing easy blackjack and raking in online winnings which can be redeemed for great prizes! Just settle in with your porridge and enjoy playing to win big. Isn’t this the porridge ever?”

The Baby bear said:

I like my porridge warm and soft. Some people add in all sorts of things like milk, butter or sugar to their porridge to make it tastier. We eat porridge all the time because it is affordable and easy to make – plus, we’re bears!”

Get the picture? Without keyword optimization you don’t achieve the best rankings, but with too much of it you will be scrutinized to see if you are trying to game the system. You’ll be penalized for it and wind up with a big bowl of porridge that isn’t going to do you any good.

Some ‘gurus’ will feed you lines about ‘2-4% density’ or ‘5-10% density’ constantly. Formulas requiring a keyword phrase to be used every 100 words precisely or at specific places in each article are common. You can’t buy into those theories though because they don’t always work. Even if they do succeed in getting people to you, they may be so unreadable you can’t keep people on your page.

Google maintains that a properly optimized article should flow naturally, without significant effort on the part of the writer at all. What that basically means is they should be natural. Your visitors should be able to read what you write without having to decipher it through a sea of keywords. However, until Google stops using algorithms to determine the value of your content, you have to pay some attention just to stay abreast of the competition – they are trying to do everything they can to game the system.

You do have to optimize for keywords, there is no way around that. What you don’t have to do however is make that the sole goal of every article you write! Try to end up with the baby bear bowl, and you will be fine. It’s the right sized portion and it’s warm and yummy – just like your content should be.