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Proper Keyword Density for a Website

Written by: Jeff Foster

Article Overview: Keyword density refers to the number of times a specific keyword or keyword phrase appears on a web page. For example, if you write a five hundred word page and use the phrase "dog training" twenty times throughout the page, "dog training" would have a four percent keyword density for that page. Let’s look at some mathematics.

Proper Keyword Density for a Website

What does keyword density mean?

Keyword density refers to the number of times a specific keyword or keyword phrase appears on a web page. For example, if you write a five hundred word page and use the phrase "dog training" twenty times throughout the page, "dog training" would have a four percent keyword density for that page. Let’s look at some mathematics.

Keyword Density % = (No. of times a word occurs / Total number of words in the article) X 100



How does this help me in the search engines?

Search engines cannot read your mind. Therefore, if you want a web page to rank for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, you need to use it cleverly within your web page. By using the keyword or keyword phrase throughout a web page, you will help the search engines identify the central topic of that web page. So this means the more you use the more you get?

Not exactly, Google and other search engines uses keyword density as a method to understand what the content is all about. Naturally, if a word like “dog training” repeats many a times on the webpage, it is very likely that the page is about “dog training." Having said that, Google knows that this is one factor that many webmasters use to their advantage, and some may even deliberately increase the keyword density for an irrelevant keyword just to manipulate and enjoy the search traffic. This woud be considered as spam by Google. A normal allowed level of keyword density would be 6% and anything beyond that may raise flags. So even though there is a calculation we follow, stick to a normal, user friendly copy on your website.



Overall site keyword density vs. just good individual keyword density web page?

For most websites, there will be a set of primary keywords, and then a much larger set of long-tail keywords and keyword phrases. The set of primary keywords should be used throughout the main pages of the website, while individual web pages can be used to target the long-tail keywords and keyword phrases.

For example, if “Dog training” is your primary keyword, you might want to optimize your main pages (pages in the main navigation) for the keyword, including the homepage and focus on the long tail keywords (“Dog training Atlanta”) for the single pages. Overall, it’s a good strategy to “level out” your main keyword into as many variations as possible.

click here for information on our Keyword Reserch services.

Should I be concerned with my link partner’s keyword density?

In general, the answer to this question is no. However, if your link partners are using an excessive amount of the same keywords or keyword phrases on their web pages (a practice known as keyword stuffing), their website could potentially be penalized by the search engines, which in turn could have a negative impact on your rankings.

 

  Webmasters – What Should My Keyword Density Be?

Keyword density should be….

If you Google the topic of keyword density, you will see suggestions ranging from two percent to twenty percent. In reality, as search engines have evolved, the role of keyword density has become a less important factor in how search engines determine the rankings of their results. So following a natural way of content copywritingis far better than following the mathematics and writing a copy for the search engines. These days Google values pages that are more user friendly and non – SEO’d rather than the tailor made pages. But yes, if you can manage to write natural looking copy with the mathematics embedded, anything around 3-6% is good enough.

My experience has been this…

From my experience, instead of worrying about how many times you use a keyword or keyword phrase on a web page, you should simply make sure that we have a webpage that looks more natural, without all those Search Engine Optimization done (even though we might have done it). Also, if you look at more SEO factors, just make sure the keyword is included in the title tag and the body of the web page (you may also want to consider using it in the meta description or H1 tag). SEO is more a combination of several factors and not a formula. So it’s clever to actually put the basic SEO practices in place, while on the webpage not letting them glare out, as optimized for the search engines.

Learn more about Search Engine Optimization

What is Really The Most Important Factor of Content?

i. Unique Content

If you want your web pages to rank well in search engines, you need to create unique content that catches people's attention. For example, if you write a piece of content that a blogger likes, they will most likely link to that piece of content, which will help improve the rankings of the web page and your website in general. So that’s the basis of this whole exercise, much like the world offline, if you are a good guy, you get lot of friends, so try to be a good guy or a good webpage in all aspects, write more exclusive articles that people would love to read and share.

  

ii. Topic relevance

Search engine decides whether a webpage is worthy of showing high on the search engines based on how relevant the information is on it. Although keyword density can give you some support in getting the content “reach” to the search engines, extensive articles with relevant links are always good in getting a boost on the relevancy factor.

ii. Correct spelling and grammar 

Before you publish a piece of content, use the spell check function of your Word Processor. Having a piece of content that is free of misspellings will make it more appealing to the visitors who are reading it. Also, while some SEOs try to purposely target misspellings, this strategy is becoming less effective as the search engines become more effective at correcting the typos of searchers.

iii. Uploaded to the right section

Category of your website When publishing a piece of content on your website, one other consideration you need to make is where the content should be located within your website. By placing the content within the most relevant location of your website's navigation structure, it will not only help when search engines are crawling and indexing your content, but it will also make it easy for visitors to find your content.

Keyword Density Tools:

• Wikipedia's Definition


• Keyword Density Tool


• SEO Chat's Keyword Density Tool

Summary

While it is important to include your target keywords and keyword phrases in the main tags and body of your content, the most effective way to improve your search engine rankingsis by writing content that people want to read and discuss on their own blogs and websites.

Related Articles
  Importance of keyword density
  ••••••>Free SEO Tip of the Day: Improve SEO and Rankings with Keyword Density Clouds
  The Value of Keywords
  Why Keywords Are Critical To Your Copywriting
  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Density

Article Tags: keyword density, phrase, web page, website



Related Forum Posts
Re: Keyword Selection - Hi All, Very interesting topic of discussion! Website success mainly depends upon the target keywords so the keywords should be relevant to website theme. Long tail keywords often rank easily in SERP. You can also use Ad word Keyword tool for keyword selection. Keyword having less competition and high monthly search volume are easy to rank.
Re: That First Customer! - Hey Tristan, Another thing to consider is to think about how targeted your visitors are. Meaning, are they actually looking for what you have to offer, and if so, are they finding it. Proper keyword research and testing will help you bring in targeted leads from the search engines. I think this will help you get that first customer and keep bringing in more and more customers.
Re: what position to request? - Hi Michael, Great suggestion from David, or you could try something around a design consultancy, How about Website Design Consultant, Design and Development Manager, Website Support and Development Manager or maybe Internet Business Development Consultant. Ultimately whatever you are comfortable with and good luck for the future, Mal.
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategies - I'd disagree with the first point. Keyword research is important, but it should not be the complete focus when doing niche research. A niche is typically made up of thousands of keywords, and researching them all is very difficult, because the keyword tools won't tell you what most of them are. Plus a niche is not a bunch of keywords, it is a demographic interested in a particular topic. You need to learn about the people in this demographic. Keyword research tells you their search habits and gives clues to competitiveness and potential profit, but you are looking at through a very narrow window of a much bigger picture.
Re: New SEO Tool from WordStream - Looks like a new one. Need to explore for its intuitiveness. I use IBP and Keyword elite. Thanks Robert


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