Highlighting Keywords?

I have to disagree with you on the highlighting front you don't always need to highlight them, you need to have copy which reads well and isnt "I am on a business forum and this business forum is very useful for business owners"

It reads silly and will be picked up by search engines, keep it simple and make sure it reads well to a reader and not the search engine"!

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Online Marketing Cheltenham | SEO Cotswolds

You'll find that Web CEO advices the use of highlighlighting keywords and they look after some very big sites. Nevertheless, I do not profess to be an expert and am prepared to be corrected if it can be proven.

I do know that I have had quite a bit of success since doing my own SEO and taking the responsibilty from the comapny that compiled our site and they claim to be experts. Of course I'll still make mistakes but I can test the water and correct them on the way.

I know and now believe that a PR rank means little in getting high on the page rankings, nevertheless I don't think I would have achieved a PR6 rank if my site was all about spamming keywords or the like.

I am prepared to take advice because I know I still have much to learn regarding SEO but it seems to me that for everyone who says one thing there seems to be an equal amount of people that say the opposite with regard to SEO.

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CD & DVD Duplication, CD, DVD & Blu-ray Replication, Graphic Design

SEO is always going to be one of those things and some stuff that will work for you might not work for another site.

I am not saying it can have a big affect but if you going to highlight them you should do using H tags, it looks silly if a user goes onto your blog and all of your keywords are highlighted.

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Online Marketing Cheltenham | SEO Cotswolds

I took the liberty of moving your comments out of the welcome thread, because it's quite a good SEO point you've raised.

Looking at garlex's site www.dischromatics.co.uk it looks (to me) to be a good balance of keyword anchor text, and the highlighted keywords seem to work, but leave the copy human readable.

Always on the look out for tips and ideas, and interesting to hear counter arguments and views, especially when its from self taught like me versus professional SEO'ers, and as the sites a PR6 (dohh, getting obsessed again) it's clearly working, or is this just down to a highly effective linking campaign?

So headsocial, you disagree with the highlighting approach. But as long as the copy is readable, isn't the highlighting simply an age old marketing trick to draw relevant keywords to the readers eye? Or are you purely on about keyword infested examples? (not garlex's site).

I must admit, I've tried different versions of this myself, so interesting to hear anyone else's opinion as well.

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cheers Steve
Forum Admin - teaboy and general gofer...

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I wasn’t directly pointing to his site, I am just saying that I have noticed it seems pointless and very silly. Why do you need to tell users about your keywords? What benefits does it have to the reader?

If you answered these questions how I think you will have then I don’t need to explain more. It’s not a bad thing to do all I am saying is it looks stupid and won’t help just by say highlighting a word in say yellow text won’t make Google pay more attention to it.

If you however do highlight it using H tags then you have done a good thing, the only reason links have to be a different colour or underlined is so Google and people know you are not trying to find things within your text.

To me personally it seems like you are trying to show off keywords which is a bit pointless as you need it to read natural and be consistent throughout.
PR again is about a range of things and won’t directly be affected by the Highlighting of text it will be because of

• Traffic
• Links
• Copy
• Back Links
• Articles
• Social Networking etc

All these things will have a role in playing on your PR but as we already know the PR doesn’t directly affect your SERPS so I wouldn’t really worry too much. I am not saying Garlex’s site directly is a bad example I am talking in general.

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Online Marketing Cheltenham | SEO Cotswolds

Thanks for your comments. At the end of the day, I think you have to judge on results. Some of my important keywords were stuck and now they are moving in the right direction. I have many keywords on the first and second page of google so I think I must be doing something right.

Doesn't SEEM silly or stupid but hey we are all entitled to our opinions? I just wish people would express them without going overboard its like I've hit a raw nerve or something.

Btw, Higlighting is endorsed by other SEO 'professionals' too.

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CD & DVD Duplication, CD, DVD & Blu-ray Replication, Graphic Design

I wasn't judging your site far from it just giving a view, as I said before everyone has stuff which works for them. I don't feel I was going over board simply saying that it won't directly have any effect

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Online Marketing Cheltenham | SEO Cotswolds

Well what ever we decide

We are not top - Highlighting Keywords

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Online Marketing Cheltenham | SEO Cotswolds

As a matter of interest where do rate in Google for your keywords?

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CD & DVD Duplication, CD, DVD & Blu-ray Replication, Graphic Design

On page 1 within the top 3 for all our corporate keywords and allot of our clients have page one listings.

These keywords include "Picture Frames" "Gold Rings" "Bathroom Tiles" " Team Building Events" "Photo Booth Hire"

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Online Marketing Cheltenham | SEO Cotswolds