What is the best number of characters per page for the seach engines?

[sunrisediving]

Hi,

I am in the middle of doing some improvements to my web site Thailand Diving - Sunrise Diving - PADI IDC - Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand - Home Page and i am wondering if someone can shed some light on how may characters per page is the recommend amount to get the best results out of google etc.
i have read many forums etc on the subject but there seems to be a lot of conflict on this.

Thank you for your help and time.

Charlie.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by sunrisediving

I am in the middle of doing some improvements to my web site Thailand Diving - Sunrise Diving - PADI IDC - Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand - Home Page and i am wondering if someone can shed some light on how may characters per page is the recommend amount to get the best results out of google etc.

No such number exists. Keyword density is also not real.

[mjtaylor]

I read recently (but can't find the article right now) that there *is* a finite number of characters that Google index but the impression I got was that it was far larger than anyone needs ...

I am not sure whether what Google shows as cache is related directly, but there was a limit on the file size cached until a couple of years ago and that was 101kb acording to this post on another forum in 2005.

In any case, you can get great results in Google with variable amounts of text (and keyword density as Jaan points out) so the advice I'd offer is: use as many words as you need to present your service or product and related info.

You're #3 for 'thailand diving' ... are you hankering after the #1 spot???

Cheers, MJ

[jtracking]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

No such number exists. Keyword density is also not real.

I more than agree. I can have literally 7 words on a page and get good rankings for my 3 keywords OR have 700 words on a page and get the same results.

There are so many other factors that actually do come into play when it comes to the search engines and keyword density is a farce!

in my humble...

[Webnauts]

Keyword Density:
It is considered good practice to maintain a keyword density for your text of between 3% and 4%. You may have to make adjustments over time and also might consider evaluating the keyword weight for top ranking sites for your keyword phrase in specific search engines. Adjust your keyword weight in hopes of gaining an edge on the competition.
Having a keyword density which is very high could result in triggering spam filters on a search engine, drastically reducing your chances of getting high rankings.

Page Length:
I would suggest you to have a look about this issue here:
Search Engine Indexing Limits: Where Do the Bots Stop? [Search Marketing]

[sunrisediving]

Thank you all for the above adivse.

Mjtaylor: you are correct i am after the number one spot in google for thailand diving / diving thailand. This is not my profession, but more of a obsession / part time job. If it is not too much too ask if you have a minute could you have a look at my site http//www.sunrisediving.net and give me any advise on what i should be doing. I feel i am lacking links but i am a bit lost on this as i have lits of inbound links but not many of them show on google. I am in the process of making the description's shorter, checking the spelling, and broken links.
Thank you for your time.
Charlie

[Webnauts]

Well, since you only asked MJ to help you, I draw myself myself back at this point, adding a last tip that your keyword density for the word "diving" seems to be too high.

It appears on the homepage alone 27 times, which means density 8.18%.

Just my two you know what...

[TrafficProducer]

I heard some time, a long time, ago that some search engines only index the first part of a web page, I think it was about the first 1Kb...

This has most likely been changed now.

If it matters at all I guess they do the count punctuation, etc..

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by sunrisediving

Thank you all for the above adivse.

Mjtaylor: you are correct i am after the number one spot in google for thailand diving / diving thailand. This is not my profession, but more of a obsession / part time job. If it is not too much too ask if you have a minute could you have a look at my site http//www.sunrisediving.net and give me any advise on what i should be doing. I feel i am lacking links but i am a bit lost on this as i have lits of inbound links but not many of them show on google. I am in the process of making the description's shorter, checking the spelling, and broken links.
Thank you for your time.
Charlie

John, I am sure Charlie would love to have your feedback on optimizing the home page ...

And, yes, Charlie, do go for links ... but for right now, here's what I would do on page/site - and these are not in order of importance, just in order of what occurred to me:

1. Title tag - Remove Home Page from it (using non searched keywords dilutes the title, I believe) making it:

<title>Thailand Diving - Sunrise Diving - PADI IDC - Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand</title>or even:
<title>Thailand Diving - Sunrise Diving - Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand</title> unless you think someone's searching PADI IDC -


2. Make an absolute link from your home page to your home page using your keyword phrase as anchor text. Same from your other pages on the site. Likn to the home page with an absolute link using "Thailand Diving" as the anchor text. An absolute link (forgive me if you know) is to the domain name and no index.php in the URL.)

3. Change this image: new%20front%20image.jpe to thailand-diving-logo.jpg and make the alt text 'Thailand Diving Logo' ...

4. get rid of the h1 tag in this link code:
<div style="display:none; height:1px; font-size:0 "><a href="http://www.belitsoft.com" title="Belitsoft, joomla development"><h1 title="Belitsoft, joomla development">http://www.belitsoft.com</h1></a></div>

5. Replace this : THE ONLY PADI 5 STAR IDC NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SCUBA DIVING CENTRE
ON PATONG BEACH, PHUKET, THAILAND with h1 heading and let it read:

<h1>Thailand Diving</h1><br>
<h2> Sunrise Diving - the Only PADI 5 Star IDC National Geographic SCUBA Diving Centre on Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand.

6. This is how I would edit your text for SEO.

Thailand Diving is one of the top SCUBA destinations in the world. Come SCUBA dive with manta rays, whale sharks, reef sharks and millions of tropical reef fish. If you are new to diving, Phuket, Thailand's warm crystal clear waters and fantastic underwater marine life make it one of the best places to learn how to SCUBA dive.

Sunrise Diving has all the facilities of a European scuba diving centre but located in amazing Phuket, Thailand. Sunrise Diving is a 100% European owned and managed scuba diving centre.

Sunrise Diving's professional PADI instructors come from all corners of the world, so we are able to teach scuba diving to you in a wide selection of languages to make your scuba diving learning experience unforgettable, fun and safe.

<h3> Come Dive Thailand with Sunrise Diving</h3>

7. Also, I am wondering if your navigation is SEO friendly ... it didn't look friendly to me, but I didn't delve ...

Please let me know how this works out for you ... and save this current page in case I am All Wrong so you can restore it ... you never know!!

And more links, of course.

Cheers,
M.-J.

[mjtaylor]

PS ... John may be right ... your KW density on diving might be too high ... and I would recommend you add some additional text to adjust that ...

[sunrisediving]

Hi Webnauts,

I was not meaning to isolate you or anybody else, i was just replying to one answer. I would appreciate any advise you can give me concerning my home page / site.
Thank you for the advise on the high key word density on the home page.
I look forward to hearing from you.

[sunrisediving]

Hi M.J

Thanks a million for all the time and advise you have given me i am now on the case to make the changes you advised me to do.
Concerning the navigation: i thought this was ok but i was not looking from an seo point of view.
If you have any more spare time i would really appriciate any more advise. I am also a bit lost on the keywords i should use, should i be using strings and not single words?

Thanks again.

Charlie

[flanok]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

PS ... John may be right ... your KW density on diving might be too high ... and I would recommend you add some additional text to adjust that ...

Hi,
I have had isues with Keyword density, with regular experiments.
I have found that when your keywords are in your URL, your keyword density can flag a filter.
In fact 2 of my websites, where I had researched keywords and then bought the URL to suit, I got best results with a density of only 2%, a filter kicked in any higher.
Of course other things come into this factor also. keyword density of incomming anchor text links.

When I bought URLs to use a "brand Name" or company name, without any keywords, I found I could get away with high keyword densitys.

In my opinion, its all a balancing act.

Mark

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by flanok

Hi,
I have had isues with Keyword density, with regular experiments.
I have found that when your keywords are in your URL, your keyword density can flag a filter.
In fact 2 of my websites, where I had researched keywords and then bought the URL to suit, I got best results with a density of only 2%, a filter kicked in any higher.
Of course other things come into this factor also. keyword density of incomming anchor text links.

When I bought URLs to use a "brand Name" or company name, without any keywords, I found I could get away with high keyword densitys.

In my opinion, its all a balancing act.

Mark

I agree, Mark, it is a balancing act - and your conclusion seems logical, but it doesn't match with other sites out there that have keywords in their domain and high density.

Here's an example: this site www.fl-keys-realestate.com has density well above 2% for florida keys real estate but is #5 in Google.

And, the keyword density on that site is lower than the 5 sites above it, as well.

Haven't analyzed the anchor text of all incoming links, but I wouldn't want to generalize from the experiment on your site to others.

Cheers, MJ

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

John, I am sure Charlie would love to have your feedback on optimizing the home page ...

OK. Then just some tips on the fly.

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

2. Make an absolute link from your home page to your home page using your keyword phrase as anchor text. Same from your other pages on the site.

Are you serious? Since when is it accessible or usable to have a visible link on your homepage to your homepage? And in terms of search engine optimization, do you want to try to put the crawler on a loop? Hmmm... very weird...

For this case you can use the "base" tag. You can add as a last tag in the header of your document:
<base href="http://www.example.com">

Additionally, you can change your body tag to:
<body id="www-example-com">

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

3. Change this image: new%20front%20image.jpe to thailand-diving-logo.jpg and make the alt text 'Thailand Diving Logo' ...

You should not add the word "Logo" in your alt attribute.

The alt attribute may look like this: alt="Thailand Diving". I hope I do not need to debate this issue here.

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

4. get rid of the h1 tag in this link code:
<div style="display:none; height:1px; font-size:0 "><a href="http://www.belitsoft.com" title="Belitsoft, joomla development"><h1 title="Belitsoft, joomla development">http://www.belitsoft.com</h1></a></div>

My God Charlie! Do you follow the spam techniques of the famous SEO Danny Sallivan? The technique he was using until we started a thread about that here at WPW?

And a general rule: Avoid using the display:none as sometimes Google cannot tell what are you using it for and you can be penalized.

I saw already too many issues that need to be fixed. I hope the other SEO experts here will help you out, as I honestly have not the time for that. That requires a complete SEO strategy.

Good luck Charlie.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

I agree, Mark, it is a balancing act - and your conclusion seems logical, but it doesn't match with other sites out there that have keywords in their domain and high density.

Here's an example: this site www.fl-keys-realestate.com has density well above 2% for florida keys real estate but is #5 in Google.

And, the keyword density on that site is lower than the 5 sites above it, as well.

Haven't analyzed the anchor text of all incoming links, but I wouldn't want to generalize from the experiment on your site to others.

Cheers, MJ

Sunrisediving keyword density for the word diving is 8.18% (27 times on one page).

Can that make his site rank better than others who have a lower density? Or did I misunderstand something?