Someone from the SEO community drew attention to a section in Google’s new digital marketing training course that recommends writing content of at least 300 words, recommends seeding keywords for specific areas of the page, and recommends targeting keywords with a keyword density of less than 2 %.
Some in the digital marketing community took to Twitter to appeal to Google about the misinformation, and Google’s Danny Sullivan responded.
Google Digital Marketing and Ecommerce Certificate
Google launched Digital Marketing and Ecommerce Certificate May 2, 2022. The training courses and certificates are designed to help job seekers find jobs in digital marketing.
This training course is accredited by the Association of Advertising Agencies of America and the Advertising Federation of America.
Google’s Digital Marketing Course Commitment to teach the following skills:
- “Develop digital marketing and e-commerce strategies
- Attract and engage customers through digital marketing channels such as search, social media and email
- Measure marketing analytics and share insights
- Build e-commerce stores, analyze e-commerce performance, and increase customer loyalty”
The stated goal of the program is to teach unskilled workers how to become proficient in entry-level digital marketing jobs.
But how can graduates of the program become proficient if what they’re learning isn’t right?
Google Training Course Recommended Keyword Density
In a section of the course called Digital Marketing Fundamentals, under week 3 of the course, there is a section called Keyword Research and Keyword Stuffing.
In this particular section, Google’s training materials specify a maximum keyword density for target keyword phrases.
Keyword density is a measure of how often a keyword appears on a web page, expressed as a percentage.
The Keyword Density measurement tells you that a keyword appears X% of the time on a page.
The original old-school search engine algorithms used to rely on keyword density to identify the content of a page. The more frequently a keyword appears on a page, the more likely the page is related to that keyword phrase.
But search engines have moved away from this method of ranking keywords.
still have?
Google’s own training courses make amazing statements about keyword density by recommending an actual keyword density limit.
The course states:
“Keep keyword density below the industry standard of 2%.
This means that 2% or less of the words on a page should be the target keyword. “
Write at least 300 words
Another eye-popping recommendation is the minimum word count for web pages, which emphasizes that the more words you have on a page, the more likely that page is to be ranked by Google.
Suggested training courses:
“Write 300+ words on your web page.
Your pages are more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages if you write higher quality content. “
where to put keywords
The document also suggests exactly where keywords should be placed:
“Your keywords may only be used once per page within your site in the following places: page title, subtitle, first paragraph, and end of body.”
Google made a mistake?
Training courses are written by Google and should not contain confidential information.
The announcement for the Certificate in Digital Marketing includes a statement that all information in the course is available at Google’s search documentation.
“This program does not contain confidential information. All Google search features taught are publicly available and you can learn more in the official Google search documentation.”
Clearly, suggestions for word count and keyword density do not originate from Google’s public documentation.
One also has to wonder how the suggestions for where to seed the keyword in the web page are generated.
If a blatant error like this could make it a live version of the course, it would call into question the reliability of the course.
Google admits bad information in digital marketing training courses
Search marketer Gianluca Fiorelli (@gfiorelli1) pointed out the error on Twitter.
So… about Connect GT (the largest and oldest Italian SEO forum, hosted by @giorgiotave), Emanuele Ricci subscribes to Google’s Digital Marketing and Ecommerce Certificate on Coursera.
Seriously…”write 300+ words”? and “keyword density”?
CC: @dannysullivan pic.twitter.com/7qdWKlJ1vs– Gianluca Fiorelli (@gfiorelli1) May 9, 2022
He also tweeted that it was an SEO myth and expressed disappointment that introductory courses in digital marketing are teaching students the wrong information.
Danny Sullivan clarified that the team developing the training course had no contact with the search team and promised to pass on the feedback.
Danny tweeted:
I’m not on the team that made this work, and they’re not part of the Search team. As a member of the search team, we don’t recommend any limits or “density” or anything like that. This one can be ignored; I’ll pass it on. Our search suggestions are here. https://t.co/zjvjWismrV
– Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 9, 2022
Search for error messages
There is a lot of misinformation surrounding digital marketing. Discovering search marketing myths in Google’s own digital marketing training courses is unexpected.
