Site-wide keyword density

[EricVallee34]

A colleague of mine was saying that he has been able to get top ranking for a high traffic term by using variations of that head term on multiple pages that are associated with the main page.

For example,he would optimize a landing page for the high traffic word "Construction." He would then build pages under this landing page that are optimized for variations of this word: "Construction facts," "Industrial Construction Companies," "Construction Resource Allocator" etc. His theory is that the subpages add credibility with spiders that the root page is the best for that root page.

This doesn't seem like it would work, but I'm curious as to what other people think.

[AaronSchinke]

I don't think KD can accomplish that on it's own. There is no doubt proper keyword placement plays a role in determining relevance, but isn't a powerful enough aspect to command rankings by themselves if there is any decent competition. Of course there are many variables...

[AlanBleiweiss]

It's not a keyword density issue.  It's a topical relationship and user value issue.  The more content you provide that builds on a core topic, the stronger that topic will ultimately become.

Think of it this way -if you're doing research on a topic would you rather find a single page on a core topic or would you rather find an entire section of pages on that topic?  While not everyone would care, it's definitely going to be better for some people.

Another way to look at it is it says "we're the definitive resource for all things highly related to this core topic".

And success is not, as Aaron suggests - it's got to be proper SEO for each page involved, and ultimately depending on competition, requires sub-topic relevant inbound links to those other pages as well.

[EricVallee34]

Great explanation.  Thank you!