My Take on Keyword Density

SenseiSteve

SenseiSteve

HD Moderator
Staff member
A quick Google search for keyword density produced over 1.3 million pages of results. So it shoud come as no surprise that Search Engine Optimization is a hotly debated topic on a lot of forums, with an awful lot of misformation propagated by enthusiasts and experts alike.

Everyone wants their website to have a high page ranking (PR) and great search engine results pages (serps), but getting there takes a lot of tweaking. What worked yesterday does not necessarily work today. I’ve previously addressed optimizing title tags and meta descriptions, but relevant keyword density is also important.

Relevant Keyword Density

It’s important to track keywords relevant to the core focus of your business, then optimize those keywords in the content of the pages on your website. The keywords in your content must flow with your site’s trend of thought, on each page - providing value to the end user. Forget about using formulas to trick Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search engines. While Google doesn’t make public its search algorithms, it very clearly places emphasis on value to the end user.

From Wikipedia

Many SEO experts consider the optimum keyword density to be 1 to 3 percent. Using a keyword more than that could be considered search spam. The formula to calculate your keyword density on a web page for SEO purposes is (Nkr / Tkn) * 100, where Nkr is how many times you repeated a specific keywordand Tkn the total words in the analyzed text. This will result in a keyword density value. When calculating keyword density, be sure to ignore html tags and other embedded tags which will not actually appear in the text of the page once it is published.

When calculating the density of a keyword phrase, the formula would be (Nkr * Nwp / Tkn) * 100, where Nwp is the number of words in the phrase. So, for example, for a page about search engine optimization where that phrase is used four times and there are four hundred words on the page, the keyword phrase density is (4*3/400)*100 or 3 percent.

Recommended Keyword Density

One to three percent is probably a safe guideline for keyword density. This should optimize hits to your site, and that’s what we all hope for - a lot of eyes on our sites.

To Your Success

- Steve
 
Nice breakdown there Steve. I know many people still get confused about this seeing as SEO is the top thing people are often thinking about (besides of course the top spot on the search engines). :)
 
Great article. From my experience SEO is a perfected science, those who know what they're doing make loads of $, and we'll all be better off knowing a bit more about it. :)
 
If anyone wants to optimize their site(s) they should really give high priority to keyword density. The keyword density for the page content should be between 2.5% - 5%. However, as the PageRank of a site increases this percentage can be lowered. For ecample if your site has a PageRank above 5, a 1% keyword density would be ok.

Remember, higher the keyword density is less pretty your content gets. Therefore, for some industries like Hotels, where delicious content is needed to make the hotel look nice, a keyword density of 2.5% could be the maximum limit. These site's should concentrate more on improving there google PageRank.

Here's keyword density tool that you can use.
http://www.lankaseo.com//KeyWord_DensityTool.aspx
 
I think as long as the keywords flow with the content, and add value to the end user, you'll be fine. Tweaking is essential though, especially in tracking what keywords or phrases draw prospects to your site.

What keywords are surfers searching for that might lead them to your product or service?
 
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