Being new to SEO can be a confusing time, especially if you don’t have anyone reliable that you can turn to for help and advice.  There are loads of website which claim to be experts in SEO and boast being the best place for you to visit when it comes to finding out everything you need to know about SEO.  The problem with many search engine optimisation methods is that they are very much a personal preference and a matter of opinion.  A lot of the time it is more a matter of trial and error rather than following a set pattern.  Many of the methods that you can follow will be more successful for some websites than others, which means that you need to look at all of the possible options in order to make an informed decision.

Is There Anything They Can Agree On?

One thing that most SEO experts will agree on is that content is king.  It doesn’t matter whether you are talking content on your website, articles on directories or other websites your content needs to be perfect.  There are many things that make up the perfect piece of content and the fact that it is well written and relevant speaks volumes and will give you a real SEO boost.

When it comes to content most people will agree that keyword placement and optimisation is important.  Google likes relevant and fresh websites to be at the top of their search engine.  This means that they will look at your text and make sure that it is relevant to the services you are trying to market.  What this means for someone that is writing website content is that you need to know your subject inside out.  You need to make sure that throughout your piece of content your main keyword is mentioned and so are any other relevant and related phrases.

However this is all a matter of balance because too many keywords can actually have a detrimental effect on your rankings.  Google do not want people tricking and buying their way to the top of search engines.  They want to make sure that the websites nearest the top deserve to be there.

Why Did They Decide This?

An old SEO trick used to be to simply mention your keyword as much as possible in the piece of text that you are writing.  Google put a stop to this because it meant that sub-standard websites were getting to the top of search engines – which is obviously not want Google and its users want.  What this means is that if you try to simply stuff keywords into articles Google will recognise this and the likelihood is that they will knock down your search engine rankings, which is of course something that you want to avoid.

So if you are looking to write content then make sure you are careful with the use of your keywords and how many of them you place in the text you are writing – you can have too much of a good thing!  Sticking to a 2% density in your text is ideal although some webmasters agree that anything up to 5% is a safe bet.  To check the keyword density of your web pages you can use the Pingler Keyword Density Tool.