Pinterest is growing faster than LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Why? Because it is so visual! I started a Pinterest account and pinned a clients Interior Design photos and received between 5 and 7 repins immediately. These repins help boost traffic to my client’s website. The best use of Pinterest is for businesses that offer products that are visually appealing.

Examples include:

• Jewelers
• Clothing Stores
• Shoe Stores
• Interior Designers
• Photographers

As I started building boards on Pinterest, as a marketer, of course I started thinking of ways to incorporate Pinterest into the marketing plans of my clients. And these are some of the reasons to do so as outlined in my associate Sue Cooper’s blog Post, “5 Reasons Why You Should Use Pinterest as an Internet Marketing Tool.” In addition to the compelling reasons Sue points out, a commenter points out these benefits:

1. Once your website is pinned you get 3 backlinks
2. Google has interest in social media signals and Pinterest is Social Media
3. Pinterest links are dofollow even for the images
4. Pinterest supports anchor text, a perfect place for keywords

Sadly, Pinterest could easily get abused by spammers for the very reasons pointed out in the bullets above. My word of advice is to use Pinterest to engage your community and share images that will be of interest to your community.

Search Engine Academy Northwest now offers half-day SEO training classes to complement certification courses already offered. The new half day classes include:

QR Codes – How to Implement Effectively to Market Your Business

March 27, 2012 from 1 pm to 5 pm.
Early bird price: $99, after March 20th $125

Local Search – Getting to Page One in the Search Engines

March 28, 2012 from 1 pm to 5 pm.
Early bird price: $99.00, after March 19th $125

You can also still choose from one of the three certification courses offered:

• 5-Day Comprehensive Online Marketing Course
  March 15 and 16, then March 21, 22 and 23, 2012 from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm.
  Early bird price: $2,295, after March 7th $2,495

• 3-Day Advanced Online Marketing Class
  March 21, 22 and 23, 2012 from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm.
  Early bird price: $1,345.00, after March 14th $1,495

• 2-Day SEO Essentials Workshop
  March 15 and 16, 2012 from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm.
  Early bird price: $995, after March 7th $1,095

Search Engine Academy stays on top of the latest changes within the search industry and materials are updated as changes occur. In addition, students receive six months of mentoring after the certification class is completed.

Topics covered in the 2-Day SEO Essentials Workshop:

• Keyword Research using Keyword Discovery by Trellian
• On-Page Optimization Tecniques
• Effective Link Building Strategies
• Writing web page copy that keeps visitors reading
• Staying out of trouble with the Search Engines
• How to Blog successfully
• Getting listed on page one for local search terms

3-Day Advanced Online Marketing Class:

• Advanced keyword research techniques
• Writing effective sales copy
• The impact of search personalization
• SEO powered press releases
• Content development and leveraging your visitors for creation
• Building link reputation
• Social media marketing
• Competitive intelligence
• Video optimization
• Local search
• Web analytics
• Starting an SEO business and more…

The 5-Day Comprehensive Online Marketing Course is a combination of the two and three day courses.  All classes are held at the Ambridge Events Center located centrally in NE Portland.

Search Engine Academy Northwest is an affiliate of Search Engine Academy. Search Engine Academy has training centers in the United States, Canada, Australia and Asia and is celebrating 10 years of teaching SEO Training to business owners, marketing professionals and job seekers. For more information on Search Engine Academy, go to http://www.searchengineacademy.com/.

Please read the post written by me at the main Search Engine Academy blog at http://blog.searchengineacademy.com/blog/2012/01/search-engine-academy-misc/free-speech-on-the-internet-in-jeopardy-join-search-engine-academy-stop-sopa-pipa/.
Join us in helping congress rethink the way these laws are written.
See also: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/internet-blackout/

When I started reviewing the new keyword research tool from Wordtracker, my first thought was each revision is dumbing down the tool more and more. I like being able to use negative keywords to reduce the number of results received and I liked being able to use wildcards in my research (this went away after the update previous to this one) the tool was simple and straight forward.

I admit I have not looked at the tool as closely as I should yet, but wanted to know what the benefits were of the new tool. I put it out on Twitter and immediately received Tweets from Wordtracker:

I sent them my email address and this is the response I received:

Hi Colleen,

Thank you for getting in touch with us. I do hope you find the following helpful – if you have any comments or questions, please feel free to let me know.

In introducing the new keywords tool, we’ve developed a more helpful and flexible system to find, target and manage keywords, as well as some other features to assist the working SEO in their day to day job.

The tool is in beta at the moment, as we have several new features and functions to add in during the coming months, but to address what we have now, and how it improves upon the older tool:

The Quick Research tool is the fastest way to get keywords from the database – in just a couple of clicks you can find the keywords you’re looking for in the Wordtracker database, and you can have a Wordtracker list and a Google list open simultaneously to compare keywords in the niche you’re working with. The actual searching that the tool does has been tested and is faster than the older tool – so you get your keywords more quicky.

We’ve made a change to the way that keywords with potential are identified. While KEI has been very useful for many people over the years, the increase in content and competition on the Internet means that it’s a less helpful metric than in the past – and working with KEI across multiple data sources has proved confusing for some users.

To address this, we’ve introduced filters for the lists – you’ll see these on the right hand side of the page. These make the lists very flexible – multiple filters can be quickly set up to show or hide keywords with certain levels of search volume or competition, and also to show which keywords contain or exclude certain text. The filters will also show the questions that people are using to search the Internet, for content.

We’ll also be introducing a more focused competition metric that can be applied to smaller groups of filtered keywords inside a list that will offer a clearer measure of competition and difficulty on your prospective targets.

We’ve also made it easy to flag target keywords, which are remembered when the lists are exported, so finding these and sharing them with colleagues or clients is quicker than it was before.

But that’s just the Quick tool. Let’s have a look at what setting up a Campaign can do.

In setting up a Campaign, you’re laying the groundwork for some properly organized research. If you enter your domain then we can give you some quick reporting on your site that will show how many pages of your website have already been indexed by the major search engines.

This feature will also be built upon in the coming weeks, and forms the basis of a more dedicated site audit tool that we’re planning to develop later this year.

Moving onwards through the process, you can set up individual keyword research projects inside a campaign. Each project can be work for either your whole site or a category section of your site. The Project name is designed to be the seed word for this part of your research – so if the category of your site that you’re working on is selling sneakers, for example, then naming the project ‘sneakers’ will automatically generate some keyword suggestions on the Keyword Map.

The Keyword map itself is a powerful part of the tool which will allow you to either mirror an existing site architecture, or set up the site structure for an existing site by dragging keyword niches to the appropriate part of the map. There’s more information about keyword mapping at http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/keyword-mapping

We’ve improved the Related Keywords tool which now presents more relevant keywords (you can currently get to the Related tool from the Keyword Map, but this will also be available in the Quick tool and in the keyword list view soon). There’s a bit more information about this at: [link missing]

Creating new niches – drilling down into the long tail of keywords couldn’t be easier when you have a list open inside a Project – you just need to click the ‘Add Niche’ icon for a keyword in a list, and the niche will be created and automatically populated with Wordtracker keywords in the background, so that when you come back to your map, it’s ready for you to assess immediately.

You’ll see a Help button on each page of the tool. Clicking this will show some detail about how to use each page, along with a video to provide some guidance.

We’re planning for the future with this tool. In the near future, additional features to expect will be:

1. SERPS ranking tools
2. More flexible interface for Google data
3. Better site statistics reporting

and more, which we’ll release details of as we’re ready to get those features to production.

I’ll be starting a regular training webinar on 25th January to introduce new and old users to keyword research with our tools (we’ve been running these for the past year or so, and they’ve proved to be very popular) which you’re welcome to attend – you’ll see details in our newsletter.

As I say, I hope this is of some help – I’d be interested to hear your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to spend some time with The old tools are still available at https://oldkeywords.wordtracker.com. >

Kind regards,

Mal

So what’s your take on this? I am going to go into Wordtracker and try it out again and see if I can get used to it. But right now, I like the former tool better.

Search Engine Academy Northwest opened its doors to SEO training in 2007 serving Portland, Oregon and people around the Pacific Northwest. Over the past five years this SEO training company has taught hundreds of business owners, marketing and PR professionals and job seekers the art and science of search engine optimization, social media marketing and more.

To celebrate this five year milestone, Search Engine Academy Northwest is offering a 25% discount off the list price of certification courses to those registering for the January SEO workshops in Portland Oregon.

Choose from one of these Ultimate SEO Mastery Workshops:

• 5-Day Comprehensive Online Marketing Course
  • YOUR PRICE $1,871.25, a savings of $623.75
• 3-Day Advanced Online Marketing Class
  • YOUR PRICE $1,121.25, a savings of $373.75
• 2-Day SEO Essentials Workshop
  • YOUR PRICE $821.25, a savings of $273.75

Search Engine Academy stays on top of the latest changes within the search industry and materials are updated as changes occur. In addition, students receive six months of mentoring after the class is completed.

Topics covered in the SEO Training courses

2-Day SEO Essentials Workshop:

1. Keyword Research
2. On-Page Optimization
3. Effective Link Building Strategies
4. Writing web page copy that keeps visitors reading
5. Staying out of trouble with the Search Engines
6. How to Blog successfully
7. Getting listed on page one for local search terms

3-Day Advanced Online Marketing Class:

1. Advanced keyword research techniques
2. Writing effective sales copy
3. The impact of search personalization
4. SEO powered press releases
5. Content development and leveraging your visitors for creation
6. Building link reputation
7. Social media marketing
8. Competitive intelligence
9. Video optimization
10. Local search
11. Web analytics
12. Starting an SEO business

The 5-Day Comprehensive Online Marketing Course is a combination of the two and three day courses. The 2-Day SEO Essentials Workshop runs January 23 and 24 from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm. The 3-Day Advanced Online Marketing Class runs January 30, 31 and February 1 from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm. All classes are held at the Ambridge Event Center located centrally in NE Portland.

To take advantage of the 25% celebration discount please go to http://seotrainingnw.com/register, choose the desired course and enter the promo code “celebration” when registering.

Search Engine Academy Northwest is an affiliate of Search Engine Academy. Search Engine Academy has training centers in the United States, Canada, Australia and Asia.

On December 14th, Search Engine Academy Northwest hosted our Two-Year Anniversary/Holiday Party/Member Appreciation Night. We exchanged gifts had a little nosh and ate cupcakes from Saint Cupcake. We had fun!

By far the best part of the evening is when members shared Internet Marketing Tips and Business Strategies for a chance to win a beautiful Pinot Noir from Willamette Vineyards. We had 11 takers and the winner was Luisa Simone of Tadpole Graphics! How’s that wine Luisa?

Anyhoo, I thought I would share the tips shared by our members. Merry Christ… oops I mean Happy Holidays!

Tip #1 Social Media Tools

Contributor: Beth Erlendson, owner of FAB! Marketing Communications, Lake Oswego

Try out the toolbar Wibiya. Adding the Wibiya toolbar to your website allows you to easily increase page views and user engagement, and promote your content. Wibiya offers a variety of free apps, enabling you to extend your content’s exposure and provide users with a more interactive experience of your website.

Tip #2 Social Media Tools

Contributor: Tysa Fennern, Clarity Innovations, Inc., Portland

Try Your Buzz for Social Tracking.

• Manage popular social sites like Facebook®, Twitter®, Yelp©, CitySearch®, and more
• Identify active customers who have the potential to reach many more
• Get recommendations on responding to comments and creating new conversations

Tip #3 WordPress

Contributor: Ian Henderson, Hendersonian Design, Portland

Hold off on updating to WordPress 3.3. Many of the plug-ins are not compatible yet. At the very least make sure your plug-ins are compatible before upgrading.

Tip #4 Networking

Contributor: Daryl Welch, Affordable Web Technology, Portland

Make friends with colleagues that use different ISP’s. Sometimes search engine rankings are different from ISP to ISP, so having a network of colleagues with different ISP’s will help you test out search engine page positions for your clients. If you are interested in being part of a list for our meet up group, let me know and we can get the list posted on our meet up website.

Tip #5 Firefox

Contributor: Kat Capps, WebTouchMedia, Portland

When using many add-ons in Firefox, your load times can slow down. To alleviate this problem, use the Firefox profile manager to create several profiles. Maybe one is clean with no add-ons and another has your SEO tools like the Google Toolbar and the Firebug Web Development tool.

Tip #6 WordPress Plug ins

Contributor: Mike Schafir, Lake Oswego

Trying to decide between the WordPress plugins Headspace2 SEO and All in One SEO Pack? Headspace 2 wins according to Mike because it also has site modules for webmaster tools, Google Analytics and much more.

Tip #7 Archival Information

Contributor: Jasmine, Portland

Lost information from a former version of your website? Use the Wayback Machine at Archive.org to capture that missing data.

Tip #8 Business Advice

Contributor: Victor Echevarria, Portland

I need to get the exact quote from Victor, but the gist of his tip was, “Use it or Lose it” which is so true!

Tip #9 Business Advice

Contributor: Bill Dwyer, Washougal, WA

Find your niche! If you are selling five things, sell three. If you are selling two things sell one. Those who focus on a niche are the winners.

Tip #10 Social Media

Contributor: Luke Ordway, MyReplayLive, Portland

Use the Facebook Graph API to push updates to your website pages. You can also find plugins already created at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/.

Tip #11 Business Advice

Contributor: Luisa Simone, Tadpole Graphics, Portland

And last but not least, our winner for the evening had this to offer:

Read the book “Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.” After Luisa read this book, she increased the close rate of new business dramatically. I’ve ordered my book have you?

If you have a tip you would like to share please add it to the comments. We are looking forward to many more. Also, if you live in the Portland area, why not join our monthly meet up. You can find us at http://www.meetup.com/SEO-Tips/.

As an almost Native Oregonian, (born in Vancouver, Washington) I wanted to share this narrative by Jeff Foxworthy that was actually an email forward from my mother. We can all use a little levity from time to time so read on and comment on which ones you can relate to. I have added my comments below each sentence.

THIS IS WHAT JEFF FOXWORTHY HAS TO SAY ABOUT LIVING IN OREGON

If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t work there, you live in Oregon.

This is so true!!! When I was in Home Depot purchasing ceiling fans, I didn’t have one non-employee helping me make a decision but two! One was an electrical contractor that I ended up hiring to install the fans!

If you’ve worn shorts, sandals and a parka at the same time, you live in Oregon.

I wish I had a picture to post because I see this all the time!

If you’ve had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed the wrong number, you live in Oregon.

This I have never experienced. Have you?

If you measure distance in hours, you live in Oregon.

OK, I can see this. When we would go to Lake Billy Chinook in the summer, people would ask how far it is and I would say two and a half hours. I thought everybody did this.

If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you live in Oregon.

This must be more Central, Southern or Eastern Oregon. I do remember seeing a deer lying on the side of the road not yet dead as we traversed over the mountain on one of our excursions and my ex-husband got his revolver out and shot it so it wouldn’t suffer. Horrible! I did say ex-husband right? It was the right thing to do I think but icky.

If you have switched from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ and back again in the same day, you live in Oregon.

Yep!

If you install security lights on your house and garage but leave both doors unlocked, you live in Oregon.

I lock my doors now, but when we lived in the country, we left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked.

If you can drive 75 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you live in Central, Southern or Eastern Oregon.

That I can’t do…

If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a 2 layers of clothes or under a raincoat, you live in Oregon.

Every year! My kids hated being princess leia wearing sweats under the costume and a raincoat over it.

If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow and ice, you live in Oregon.

You can see this most prominently when you cross the border from Multnomah County to Clackamas County!

If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction, you live in Oregon.

It’s road construction season all year long!

If you feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash, you live in Oregon.

I would never throw these things in the trash. I looked a moving to Idaho at one point and I asked the recruiter about recycling in the city I was going to move to and he said it was non-existent. Do Oregonians live in a bubble?

If you know more than 10 ways to order coffee, you live in Oregon.

I know of more than 10 ways!

If you know more people who own boats than air conditioners, you live in Oregon.

I grew up on a boat! (Not literally) And, we had no air conditioning!

If you stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the “Walk” signal, you live in Oregon. 

OMG! I do this! What a dork!

If you consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it is not a real mountain, you live in Oregon.

There are mountains with no snow?

If you can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Dutch Bros, you live in Oregon.

YES!!! Can’t everybody?

If you know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon, you live in Oregon.

My ex loved to fish. We had fresh fish all the time! JEFF forgot about Steelhead.

If you know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Clatskanie, Issaquah, Oregon, Umpqua, Yakima and Willamette, you live in Oregon.

se-quim, will-a-met-tee, nah just kiddin ya…

If you consider swimming an indoor sport, you live in Oregon.

Maybe, but this is pushing it a bit.

If you know that Boring is a city and not just a feeling, you live in Oregon.

Man, how old is this joke?

If you can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food, you live in Oregon.

There are people out there that can’t tell the difference?

If you never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho, you live in Oregon.

I don’t need no stinking waterproof matches or a poncho.

If you have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain, you live in Oregon.

Any takers on this one?

If you think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists, you live in Oregon.

I use an umbrella, but not very oftened. It has to really be coming down!

If you buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones after such a long time, you live in Oregon.

Yes, I have several pairs…

If you actually understand these jokes and share them with all your OREGON friends, you probably live or have lived in Oregon. Also what about all the different descriptions for rain? such as: a mist, sprinkling, downpour, drizzle, shower. Have more to share? Please do!

On November 2nd, 2011; I was interviewed by Barbara Saunders on her radio show Solo Pro Radio on the Women for Women Network. Barbara Saunders is the Director of the International Association of Self-Employed Communication Professionals, Founder of the Solo Pro Academy, and the Solo Pro Success Coach. Her radio program airs every Wednesday morning – 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern – for expert interviews, cutting-edge strategies and game-changing insights into the new business reality. The focus of her show is on:

• Thriving new business models custom made for the 21st Century
• How to charge what you’re worth and get it
• How to position yourself like an expert and attract well-paying clients

The interview focuses on marketing strategies employing search engine optimization and Social Media. If you are interested in listening to this 50 minute interview, please click here to stream the MP3.

If you would like to download the podcast to listen later, right click on this podcast link and save the file to your computer. This file is approximately 23 MB.

One of the best tactics that I implement when performing search engine optimization is finding a keyword rich domain name that has the business’ highly competitive keyword phrase in it.

Why are keyword rich domain names so powerful?

Time and time again, when we use this tactic, combined with great on-page optimization, sites I work on move to the top of the rankings for that keyword phrase. Pundits debate why this is the case; some pundits believe that you move up quickly in the search engine results pages (serps) because back links are typically created using your URL. When the URL has a keyword phrase in it, you begin to rank well. Others believe it is because Google uses the domain name as a ranking factor in the algorithm in addition to back links. Whatever the reason, it works.

SO, here are my recommendations regarding the use of a domain name as an SEO strategy.

Purchase two domain names, one keyword rich and one vanity or branded domain name. An example is www.travelandwords.com and www.travelwritersconference.com. In this scenario, the website is hosted under www.travelwritersconference.com, but for marketing purposes, www.travelandwords.com is used and 301 redirected back to www.travelwritersconference.com. The reason the site should be hosted with the keyword rich domain name is because any domain names that are 301 redirected transfer all the power of that domain to the one it is redirected to therefore all power is being built up around the domain name under which the site is being hosted.

There has been very little SEO work done to the Travel and Words conference website, but it is ranking number one for “Travel Writers Conference.”

Another example is my own website www.seotrainingnw.com. I am hovering between pages one and two for the term “SEO Training” and am in a strong number one position for “SEO Training Portland”. This is partially due to the domain name. I changed my domain name from www.sea-oregon.com to www.seotrainingnw.com using a 301 redirect and within a week or two I was bumped up from the bottom of page two to the top of page two.

Word of Caution: You WILL lose some of your rankings in the short run, but the long term benefits are substantial.

There are certain actions one should perform when optimizing a page for Google. I am going to outline eight actions to follow when optimizing a page. Keep in mind that on-page optimization is page specific, so you will want to optimize one page per keyword phrase.

Many times, you can get to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) by following these simple guidelines

If the search term is highly competitive, you will also need to build back links to the page with the keyword phrase in the link to help move you to page one. Link building is a topic that can cover several blog posts, so we will save that for another day.

It isn’t just one factor that makes a difference; it is the combination of all of these factors that helps you move to page one in the SERPs for less competitive keyword phrases.

Below is the list of items to consider when optimizing a page:

1. Page Name
2. Title Tag
3. Meta Description
4. Meta Keywords
5. H1 Tag
6. Bolded Text
7. Link Text
8. 1% to 2% keyword density for Google

Naming your Page

When naming your page, use the keyword phrase you have chosen for the page name. I am going to use the keyword phrase “Registered Dietitian” as an example. So the page name is http://physicalmedicineandrehab.com/services/registered-dietician.html.” I used a common misspelling in the page name to capture that keyword phrase also.

Title Tag

Your title tag is part of the HTML code in the <head> section of the page. Try to place your main keyword phrase in the beginning of the title tag as so:

<title>Registered Dietitian: New Fairfield, Connecticut, Danbury, CT; Brewster, New York</title>

Again, I am trying to capture several keyword phrases in one Title Tag:

1. Danbury, Ct Registered Dietitian
2. New Fairfield, Ct Registered Dietitian
3. Brewster, NY Registered Dietitian

These are the three cities in which they have offices, so we want to capture searches for “Registered Dietitian” in these cities. It isn’t as important to be number one for the main keyword phrase “Registered Dietitian” as it is to be number one or on page one for the geographic location and the main keyword phrase because not many people will drive more than maybe 20 miles to visit a dietitian.

Meta Description

You don’t get a whole lot of traction for search using the meta-description, but where you do get the traction is using it as a mini sales pitch as follows:

<meta name="Description" content="Want to improve your overall health?
Visit Sue Ann Ciatto, RD, CDN, a registered dietitian who will create a
custom plan for you. Schedule an appointment today." />

Keep the length of the meta-description to around 150 characters and use your keyword phrase in the meta-description to increase the chances that it will be used on the SERPs. It has been my experience that the Search Engines (SEs) pull the description from around the keyword in the body text If the keyword isn’t in the meta-description.

Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords are probably the least useful of the on-page optimization strategies I am describing. Google, according to Matt Cutts, a Google Engineer, told participants of SMX Advanced 2010 that the keyword meta-tag is no longer used in the Google algorithm.

“Danny – talk about the annotation part of it, mentions meta keywords

Matt We don’t use meta keywords! ”

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com/2010/06/you-a-with-matt-cutts-smx-advanced/

The best way to use the keywords meta-tag is to place your misspelled words in it if it is used at all.

H1 Tag

The H1 tag also helps the SEs understand what the page is about. Use the keyword phrase towards the front of the H1 tag. There should only be one H1 tag per page. If it is difficult to fit your keyword phrase into the H1 tag then place it in an H2 tag instead. Bottom line, it should be in one or the other.

Bolded Text

Place your Keyword phrase in bolded text on the page. It doesn’t matter where, just so it’s there. In the example above, the secondary keyword phrases are both bolded and links which seems to do the trick just fine.

Link Text

The primary keyword phrase is “Registered Dietitian” and then there are several subsets on the pages as well. These include:

1. Danbury, Ct Registered Dietitian
2. New Fairfield, Ct Registered Dietitian
3. Brewster, NY Registered Dietitian

The reason for this is to gain traction for keyword phrases that relate to the main keyword phrase as you can see in these screen shots for the Google SERPs:

We do not show up in the top 10 pages for “Registered Dietitian”. We would need to do some targeted link building to improve our rankings for this term.

1% to 2% Keyword Density

Tally up all the words on the page and divide by the number of keywords on the page to get your keyword density. In the image below, I have highlighted the keywords for you to see.

If I add up all the keywords on this page, I come up with 14 keyword phrases “Registered Dietitian”. The total count of words on this page is 550, 550 divided by 14 equals 2.5%, so I am a little bit over the 2%, but it doesn’t appear to be hurting me in this case because I am on page one for the three main keyword phrases that are important to me:

1. Danbury, Ct Registered Dietitian
2. New Fairfield, Ct Registered Dietitian
3. Brewster, NY Registered Dietitian

Remember, these are just guidelines and not hard and fast rules. I have been using these guidelines for about four years now and they seem to work pretty well for keyword phrases with low competition. However, the high competition keyword phrases require additional strategies to get to page one. My recommendation is to follow these guidelines first, then add additional strategies later once you see where that page settles in on the SERPs.