What is keyword density and does it really matter?

SEO keyword density (does it really matter?)

Let’s look closely at keyword density in relation to SEO.  It is widely accepted that a website is directly linked through a set of key words or phrases used throughout the page.  These keywords are used in the body of the page, or the content, as well as being key parts of the page title, URL, and various meta tags.  Obviously, when a spider crawls the site, the frequency of related keywords will increase the perceived relevancy of the site to that search engine.  But it is also possible to turn a positive aspect into a negative one through keyword stuffing, or the excessive use of keywords.

When someone types a search query into a search engine, that string of words instantly becomes a keyword.  The search engine will attempt to match that set of words exactly as it is typed, in both page titles and the content of the pages, and return the most closely related results.  To determine which results are the most closely matched, that initial search string is checked within the web page content, and the relevancy of the result is calculated accordingly.  This is a much simplified explanation of the importance of keywords, but still a realistic description.  The goal of a perfectly optimized website is to anticipate what search terms best describe the page contents, and make those terms prominent within the page.  Since the title is first thing analyzed in search results, be certain to use your search terms within the page title, as well as using it at least once in your meta description of the page.

In the page contents, your keyword density should range between 1%-10%.  At 1% you are either not going to match for relevancy, or the search will have been so vague that you’ll be competing with millions of seemingly unrelated pages.  A density of 10% is pushing the threshold of what search engines regard as advertising, or spam.  Most successful websites use keyword density in the 3%-7% range.  Remember also that you are able to use multiple keywords within a page.  This allows you to use related terms to your main term, which increases the overall relevance of the site when it is analyzed.  If your density is too high, the site risks being penalized for advertising or trying to “fool” the search algorithms, so be careful to avoid using the same term more than 10 times per every hundred word-phrases.

Article written by SEOnotepad.com