LPD - The New SEO Phrase, and How It Is Debunked

Recently, there was room in the company for an offsite SEO “Buddy”, as we like to call it. It’s somebody who does a little bit of the legwork on the SEO team - submission to directories, article submission, etc. Basically anything it’s not cost effective for the western world to do. The main SEO team instead focuses on promoting the sites as a whole, networking with other webmasters, and getting as many relevant eyeballs to the site, however they see fit.

Anyway, whilst looking for a suitable buddy, I found a website for a SEO firm in the sub continent with this claim:

We GUARENTEE a rate of more than 10LPD for your site!

Pretty bold eh? One question though: what’s LPD?!?!

After a email with the sales team of the company, I managed to establish that LPD is Links Per Day. It all sounds very impressive, but I declined.

It’s a great tactic by unscrupulous Search Engine Optimisers. Things such as “Poison Words” (words that cause your google ranking to drop because it’s in the url/title tags - examples include “forum”, “blog” or “directory”), Keyword Density (how many times the keywords you typed appear in the text), KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) were all invented to try and baffle clients with science. Add LPD to it now.

LPD or Links Per Day is a stupid measurement. Sure, you can keep building links, but which would you rather have? 5 links built per day, or 1 link a week or fortnight from a well established site?

Poison Keywords is an example of how SEO goes over the top of the most important thing - usability. Chances are you won’t be anywhere for the word “forum” in google, so SEO’ers would take it out of the title tags, and forums in terms of adsense revenue are generally pretty rubbish in converting.

However, you’re hindering your usability of your site, which in turn affects your search engine traffic. If your site is a “forum” (be it a “football forum”, “dating forum” or whatever), say your site is a forum!

Keyword Density. Again, this another case of how SEO goes over usability. Say you’re targetting “Manchester Plumber”. Which do you think reads better?

Jim’s Plumbing is a plumber based in manchester. If you ever need a plumber for your drains, sinks or toilets and you live in Manchester, Salford or the surrounding areas, give Jim’s Plumbing a call!

or

Jim’s Plumbing is a Manchester Plumber. If you ever need a Manchester Plumber for all your needs for sinks, drains or toilets. Give jim’s Plumbing a call!

Sure, the latter one has a higher keyword density of “Manchester Plumber”, but the first one reads a lot better. You can sneak in keyword phrases easily for “Manchester Plumber”, but it’s a case of being creative, not hitting some arbitary value.

KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index. This is one of those things which, ironically, makes a hell of a lot of sense. However, it can be thrown out to baffle people. It makes sense that a phrase that has only has 50,000 competition and 1,000 searches a day would be easier to bring more traffic than a phrase that has 1,000,000 competition and 10 searches a day. I just don’t believe that clients should know this.

And this is the whole point that many SEO marketers, who look for clients, get it wrong. They baffle people with science and phrases, and in the case of LPD, make stuff up that even I haven’t heard of (and I’ve been doing this for 3 years). Sure, in a blog like this, you can assume some level of knowledge (write “SEO” instead of “Search Engine Optimization”), but if I was speaking to clients, I’d call it “Search Engine Optimization” or indeed “Web Marketing”. That way, the client has a good understanding of what I do, and I don’t baffle them with science.

What SEO phrases do you hate?