The beauty of debates is that you get 2 individuals in relative fields that have conducted research & came up with different results for a collaborative answer, Thus setting what some may call a Standard.Our Keyword Vs. Density testing was initiated to try & find Google algorithms KeyWord Red Flag Vs. Optimal KeyWord Usage that may benefit an Overall SEO campaign.The Testing:1st doorway attempt: In my personal research I submitted 3 doorway pages that were content rich with a 7%-9% specific key word density. Granted after 7-14 days these pages ended up in the top 10 (1st page of google). 7-14 days later they were bumped from the index entirely.2nd Doorway attempt: This time I bumped up the keyword density to a 13%-15% for all 3 pages & made sure the pages keywords reflected a variation of my main site content (Trying to trick the engines this time into thinking they were simply additional pages to the main site theme, yet focusing on individual product lines).Again same result, indexed within 7-14 days & dropped after an additional 7-14 days.3rd Doorway Attempt: at this point I have learned a little from the first 2 attempts. I focused on keeping my keyword density under 5% & over 3%, Continued using an added target phrase as in the 2nd attempt targeting a specific product. I also added alt & title html Tags to both the hyperlinks & images. These pages indexed within 7-14 days & 2 of these pages still remain on the first page of google for there search terms 2 months later.(Note: my experience with this may be unique, as we know everyones results may vary, However my personal Opinion on the matter is that somewhere between 5%-7% density a spamming red flag comes up in the mathematical algorithms.)Alt Title Tags:As far as the alt & title tags go: the alt tag simply provides an alternative text if an image does not appear, while the Title tag tells what the link/page in reference is about in a short sentence (Normally 5-20 words from what I have seen on the average).The debate on whether Image tags such as Alt/Title actually help has been going on for a long time. Myself, once again (Personal Opinion) leans towards Relevance simply based on how a mathematical algorithm works.(Note: I have read a lot of articles on the subject and found different theories which motivated our own research. I must encourage anyone reading this post to always conduct your own research "If possible". Basing research off an article you read or worse an article you read that they wrote about an article they read is all he said she said.)Ruling "OUT" inbound link support:I only have 1 link pointing to my research / test doorway pages (From my main site footer) & multiple outbound links in the form of navigation. So there is not really much inbound link support to the doorway itself. Ok, I'll post one of my product targeted test doorways as an example along with the keyword phrase
Please note that this link was placed merely for supporting reference to this Testing debate)http://www.scorpionagency.com/html/usmc ... bsite.html<~This doorway targets a USMC Military Website Template with the Key phrase being "USMC TEMPLATE". Now granted that search phrase only seems to be registering 5-15 hits per day (Its a test page) with a focus on keyword density between 3%-5% along with image & hyperlink alt/title tags to analyze the affects of overall ranking. The page is #1 in Google for the term.Unless the Authoritative presence of my root URL is directly influencing the doorway with one inbound link, I'm not sure that the inbound link theory plays a part for this particular doorway. (Of course I could be wrong).Now the fact that it is a sub-page from the root index along with supporting outbound links back to the root & various sub-index pages may play a roll in the equation (Again its speculative).In Conclusion:While going from failure to success may seem like unsupported evidence to some, the fact remains that the testing in the end produced Evident positive results (Unmeasurable or otherwise). So far the 3%-5% seems to be pretty safe, I am in the process of starting a 5.01% - 6.99% test to push the limits (Seeing that the 7%-9% was bumped from the index). I am open to any additional research anyone has done them self in this area (With the exception of he said she said scenarios).In addition to the Image Alt/Title attribute aspects:Some of my sub-pages that have free avatars on them (Utilizing the Alt attributes) - The Google Algorithm seems to have changed again, thus putting some of my image saturated pages in top 1-4 positions (1st Page of Google).This may be a fluke (As we know they do happen), however so far for the last 20+ days the positions are solid. (Not much competing for the terms of course, maybe a 5-10 per day search term at best). In any case I would have to say that a little more weight has been shifted to image alt/title attributes in this situation.The pages them self may have a total of 1 paragraph of text (If that). - Therefor the Alt/Title text is being used as additional supporting textual content in the algorithm, leading to the Current results in the SERP's -It supports the Image Alt/Title attribute theory though...
Please note that this link was placed merely for supporting reference to this Testing debate)http://www.scorpionagency.com/html/usmc ... bsite.html<~This doorway targets a USMC Military Website Template with the Key phrase being "USMC TEMPLATE". Now granted that search phrase only seems to be registering 5-15 hits per day (Its a test page) with a focus on keyword density between 3%-5% along with image & hyperlink alt/title tags to analyze the affects of overall ranking. The page is #1 in Google for the term.Unless the Authoritative presence of my root URL is directly influencing the doorway with one inbound link, I'm not sure that the inbound link theory plays a part for this particular doorway. (Of course I could be wrong).Now the fact that it is a sub-page from the root index along with supporting outbound links back to the root & various sub-index pages may play a roll in the equation (Again its speculative).In Conclusion:While going from failure to success may seem like unsupported evidence to some, the fact remains that the testing in the end produced Evident positive results (Unmeasurable or otherwise). So far the 3%-5% seems to be pretty safe, I am in the process of starting a 5.01% - 6.99% test to push the limits (Seeing that the 7%-9% was bumped from the index). I am open to any additional research anyone has done them self in this area (With the exception of he said she said scenarios).In addition to the Image Alt/Title attribute aspects:Some of my sub-pages that have free avatars on them (Utilizing the Alt attributes) - The Google Algorithm seems to have changed again, thus putting some of my image saturated pages in top 1-4 positions (1st Page of Google).This may be a fluke (As we know they do happen), however so far for the last 20+ days the positions are solid. (Not much competing for the terms of course, maybe a 5-10 per day search term at best). In any case I would have to say that a little more weight has been shifted to image alt/title attributes in this situation.The pages them self may have a total of 1 paragraph of text (If that). - Therefor the Alt/Title text is being used as additional supporting textual content in the algorithm, leading to the Current results in the SERP's -It supports the Image Alt/Title attribute theory though...