Blog Index Pages Penalized?

Typically, the index pages of blogs are filled with the latest blog posts. For regular readers, it's great. You can come to the index page and read the latest posts without digging around the site.

But what about search engine optimization? Blog posts usually contain your targeted keywords, but not at the same density as a carefully written index page.

For example, my main competitor has about five paragraphs on their index page that describes the site. It's optimized for about four keywords. In those five paragraphs, the primary keyword is mentioned 13 times. The secondary keyword is mentioned 10 times. And so on.

On the other hand, my page has the title and first paragraph of the last 10 posts. Each post is optimized, but not at the same density as my competitors index page.

I suppose I could increase the keyword density, but wouldn't that be a crappy solution? I don't want to subject my readers to a whole site filled with highly keyword dense articles.

I'm curious to hear what other blog users do. Blogs are great for their regular content, but I wonder if they're taking a hit on keyword density.

Thats a tricky issue and I think you have to balance two things.

First, your page is being updated regularly. I have been led to believe that updating content helps with SEO, but considering all the old static pages that get high rankings I suspect its only a small part of the equation.

The biggest issue is visitor retention. If your front page never updates, it certainly doesn't help bring visitors back.

One alternative, have three paragraphs or so of optimized text, and then just list the headlines of recent blog posts.