iPassion

There are a few interesting threads I’m following on LinkedIn.
Here are a few key passages from various answers to the followign questions:

• What keyword density % people are using for site SEO?
• Submitting articles and SEO
• Why do companies blog?

About keyword density in blog posts:

“I have run reports on sites which usually bear around a 1-2% density for the primary keywords. This means that a specific term is repeated 3-6 times in 300 words of copy.”

“The short answer is: If your keyword density is close to hitting 5%, then you’ve definitely got too many keywords in there.”

“… as a general rule, you don’t need to be above 5-7%. Anything above that is certainly unnecessary.”

“Users today are becoming selective in the search patterns. Many rely on phases or “direct usage” to filter out the non-sense results that have little or no value to the search request. Hence the beauty of a blog, writing a column filled w/ keywords and links to seperate pages can sometimes answer most of the questions.”

About submitting articles, syndication and content duplicates being recognized by search engines:

“The consensus is that yes, dupe content can be detected but it is rarely penalized. Particularly if you are using article directories. [...] As long as you are using legitimate sites, you don’t have any problems. Of course, if you really want to be certain – post an information rich press release to your blog. Use a different press release for submission to the syndication sites, and reference the blog post in that press release. That will give you a far better search engine. “

“Start by sharing your articles with 2 or 3 sites. If they’re working effectively (i.e. you’re getting more visitors and leads to your site), then stop there. If not, try 2 or 3 more sites. It’s often a waste of time to submit your article to every site you know about. If the directory doesn’t look or feel legitimate, or has a low Page Rank, don’t use it. If it looks like spam to you, then it probably looks like spam to Google.”

And finally, here’s why companies (should) blog…

“What blogs do that the other tools do not is tell a story and invite participation – in the age of participation a blog has been one of the cornerstones of this evolution in digital messaging. Blogs can show the personality of an organisation, its culture, thinking etc… A blog creates a dialogue between the audience and the author. The dialogue builds a relationship.”

“The concepts of social networking and viral marketing are exciting and the benefits have yet to be fully understood or even measured. Yet everyone concludes they are incredibly powerful and can suddenly steer markets. Blogging may have been an early form of viral marketing.”

“[...] the point of blogging [...] is connecting your company and your brand with customers in a less plastic, pabulum-based manner. People want to deal with humans on a company blog, not faceless regurgitation of press releases.”

Original discussions can be found here:

• Curious what keyword density % people are using for site SEO?
• Submitting articles and SEO
• Why do companies blog?