What is keyword density
Posted by Will Blears on November 11, 2008 in SEO TutorialsThis may sound like a very basic question for those who have been in the Internet marketing business for a while now however I do believe it is a question which appears very frequently on internet marketing forums, such as digital point.
So I have decided to try and explain in a simple and basic way what keyword density is. For those who are not familiar with SEO I suggest you take a look at my SEO tutorials there are various articles for both the beginner and expert.
So, what exactly is keyword density?
Keyword density is the ratio between the amount of keywords on a web page against the overall amount of text displayed on that same page.
Take this piece of text for example
SEO is one slice of the internet marketing pie. This pie helps to grow websites and enables them to take advantage of every area of the internet. SEO is one of these slices of internet marketing with SEO you are able to use on and off page SEO to impact your overall search engine rankings. When learnt SEO can be a highly valuable slice of internet marketing.
The main keyword in this piece of text is “SEO” and it appears 5 times within the whole section of text. Now if you take the overall amount of words in the piece of text, this being 67 words and do a small calculation.
5/67×100=7.5% keyword density. So “SEO” appears in the overall text 7.5% of the time that is your keyword density.
Generally you want to keep your keyword density between 5%-7% this keeps Google happy and ensures your site is not highlighted for keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing is the technique of using one or more keywords excessively on a single page.
How will taking keyword density into consideration help my site in the search engines?
By optimising your articles with the right amount of keywords you are maximising the overall amount of keywords you can include in your article strengthening it against other similar articles on your competitor’s websites. Keyword density is something that is not highly talked about or acted out mainly due to the time it takes and also because the strength of optimising your article through using the right amount of keywords can vary.
In conclusion it is important to keep note of your keyword density, you don’t have to keep to an exact percentage however it’s important to be sure you are not excessively using keywords throughout your article.
If your wondering how to find the right keywords to target on your website in general and in each article then you can take a look at my All in one keyword research series which talks in depth about researching and analysing the web for the right keywords.
It’s truly amazing what a difference keeping keywords in mind can make for your site.
Fortunately, there are a LOT of tools out there to keep you from counting on your fingers and toes to compute your keyword density!
And you’re right – the only thing worse than not writing with keywords in mind is STUFFING your keywords.
Good Advice!
Pretty good advice. I use this Keyword Density Tool to check the keywords on my website, and to avoid keyword stuffing.
Thanks for your great full information.
Your calculated a keyword density, totally 67 words and SEO is 5 times. I could not understand the 5/167*100. can you please explain me? please…
Firstly thank you for reading it and your feedback. Secondly thank you for highlighting tha embarrasingly I did the calculation wrong although I did verify it with a friend of mine who does Maths at University.
The sum should be 5/67×100 which gives 7.5% which sounds much better. I have edited the article to show this, however I believe your still confused about the actual sum.
Basically you take the amount of times your keyword has been added to the text and divide it by the overall number of words in the text then times by 100 to give you the percentage.
The percentage then shows the amount of times the keyword appears in the text over the amount of text in total.
Hope this makes sense.
I do believe keyword density doesn’t not help much in improving our search engine ranking already, it’s only works in the past but not now. I do think that fresh content is what Google want and Google might reward us with that!
I agree the strength of writing content to a precise percentage of keyword density will not increasing your rankings in the search engines much. However over doing it and instead “keyword stuffing” your article can have dramatic effects.
The best overall strategy is to write your content for your readers and not for the search engines. When your writing content think about how your reader would like this to be presented.
Will.
Nice article. Opened my eyes to a few things. Thanks for sharing.
[...] for the search engines is about more than just stuffing your article with keywords (known as Keyword Stuffing) its about over optimising your title tags, meta tags and adding too many links. By doing all this [...]
[...] What is Keyword Density? – An explanation as to what Keyword Density actually is. [...]