Ranking a Page vs Ranking a Site

[Frigid]

Hi Everyone,

I've been reading through these forums for a few weeks now, and I have learned a TON! I decided to finally register so I can say Hi and start contributing to the community.

I have a question for you. I have a wordpress blog that is about 6 months old with a total of about 30 posts. Over the last couple months, I started targeting a specific keyword that gets about 4K exact monthly global searches and a somewhat weak competition. I built a post structured like this:

mysite (dot) com / my-keyword-title-of-post (example URL)

<h1> My Keyword: Title of Post </h1> (Example title structure of my post)

<h2> Official My Keyword </h2> (This is actually IN the post Bolded and underlined)

Then in the body of the post, I have a keyword density of close to 3% and italicize and/or bold the keyword throughout. All 100% unique content.

I also have the keyword in meta description. Keyword is all over the place including: URL, H1 Tag, Title, H2 Tag, Meta Description and a has a solid keyword density.

I then started writing similarly structured posts but with different post titles. So the new Post titles look like this:

<h1> My Keyword: Different Post title </h1>

I have about 3-4 different posts with the same keyword in the title, H1, H2, URL, Meta description, keyword density. (Obviously the actual post title is different, and the post content is unique to each post title).

Each of these posts has started climbing up the G ranks for that keyword (17, 24, 25, and one farther back). I've been wanting to create more posts with this structure as this keyword is one of my categories and a serious part of my website.

My thought process was to try to rank my site for that keyword, but I have since been hearing that it's not your SITE you should be ranking, it's your PAGE.

Am I going about this wrong? If I make more posts with that keyword all over of the place, will it have a negative impact on my post that is ranked 17 and climbing? I don't want my new posts to hurt my other posts for that keyword.

BTW, This is a growing blog that I continually post to with adsense, CB ads, and Amazon links sprinkled throughout my posts. It isn't like a 5 page Amazon site with a main money page.

I'd love to hear recommendations and suggestions. Thanks for your help!

[Bryan V]

You can rank the root or subpages, it does not matter.

Is the way you're doing it useful to visitors? There is no need to excessively use your keyword on the pages, or create multiple pages on the same keyword if the content is not different enough.

If its very similar content I would just put it all on the same page with different subheadings, instead of having a website that has ALL its pages with the same keyword in it.

[Fraggler]

Google ranks pages, not sites. You should have 1 page that you want Google to return for that particular keyword. All of your links for that keyword should point to that same page.

Use your other pages to target related subjects in the niche. This creates a theme for the site which will help all of the pages over time.

[bigcat1967]

first of all - forget about Meta description. Google doesn't look at that.

I would keep writing naturally sprinkled w/ KWs. Remember - write for humans - not for bots.

Also - promote your site on FB and Twitter. You might want to use LinkedIn as well.

I recently put a video on LinkedIn and I got a lot of views on that (and I'm monetizing the video as well. )

good luck.

[dadamson]

You are overthinking it.

It's ok to sometimes not bold your keyword, it's ok to have a keyword desity under 3%, it's ok to WRITE FOR THE VISITORS AND NOT THE SEARCH ENGINES!

Often people while create a site and focus the entire site around a difficult keyword and eventually rank their homepage for it, while their other posts and pages are focused around similar and the same keyword, these will rank for longer term keywords while still containing and being highly related to their main keyword.

Yes, Google ranks PAGES, not SITES, but you should always keep your site well structured and highly related to your main keywords. Google will still look at your overall site and rank your individual pages on internal backlinks and relevance of your entire site.

[cashcow]

As stated above, don't overdo it on the on page SEO.

Google ranks pages for particular keywords and usually only 1 page per website so pick the page you want to rank and back link accordingly. Don't use the target keywords phrase in the anchor text too much (i.e. less than 50%)

I guess it is good to keep posting to your blog but I don't know if its a good idea to use the same keywords over and over in those posts. I don't know if its a bad idea either but it certainly doesn't seem natural so I wouldn't do it myself.

Lee

[iAmNameLess]

Originally Posted by bigcat1967

first of all - forget about Meta description. Google doesn't look at that.

But meta description DOES matter when it shows up high. A good meta description will increase the clicks TO your site once it is already ranking high.

[Kauzmo]

Originally Posted by iAmNameLess

But meta description DOES matter when it shows up high. A good meta description will increase the clicks TO your site once it is already ranking high.

This is correct. Write unique and intriguing meta descriptions to help pull a few clicks.

[transcriptionservices]

hey,
You can also concentrate on ranking a page becomes sometimes if a page is ranked high it also benefits the whole site.

[Frigid]

Great, Thanks for the replies.

I started analyzing my first page competitors for that keyword and tried to make my posts do everything they weren't doing. I guess maybe I got too caught up in that. I feel like I have been writing for the readers, but maybe I've gone a little too hog wild on the keywords lately. Thanks again for the input.

[David Sneen]

I agree with the SEO juicer. We owe it to our visitors to write for them, not for the engines. Once written, go back, and see if you can inject a keyword here and there without messing up the message, but don't pollute your site by constantly stretching to insert keywords where it will damage content and readability.