Optimum SEO Keyword Density: A Real Life Case Study
So you’ve built your website, you know what keywords you want to target (ie, what words your customers are searching for), and you’re ready to write your copy. They have told him that he must use his keywords frequently in order to appear in the search results for those keywords. But what does “frequently” mean?
How many times should you use your main keyword? This case study helps answer that question.
Some background on “Keyword Density”
To understand optimal keyword usage, we must first have some way to measure keyword frequency. In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), frequency is known as density. Keyword density is a measure of the number of times your keyword appears on a page expressed as a percentage of the total words on that page. For example, if your page has 100 words and your keyword phrase appears 5 times, your density is 5%. So when you hear someone say “keyword density,” that’s usually what they’re talking about. (TIP: You can automatically check your page’s keyword density at LiveKeywordAnalysis.com.)
However, there is another, more complex measure of keyword density that takes into account the text components in the page’s HTML (ie, the meta tags: title, keywords, alt text, description, and comments). By using this measure, you don’t just count the words your visitor sees; it also counts the words in your meta tags. For example, if you have 100 words in your home page, 10 words in your Title tag, 20 words in your Description tag, 70 words in your Alt tags, and 10 words in your Comments tag, your total words for the page is 100 + 10 + 20 + 70 + 10 = 210. Similarly, when counting keywords, you not only add the number of times a visitor will see your keyword, you also count the number of times that keyword appears on your meta tags. For example, if your keyword appears 5 times in your home page copy, 3 times in your Title tag, 5 times in your Description tag, 30 times in your Alt tags, and twice in your Comments tag, your total count keyword density is 5 + 3 + 5 + 30 + 2 = 45. So, with a total word count of 210 and a keyword count of 45, the keyword density is 45/210 x 100 = 21%. It is argued that this measure of keyword density is more relevant than search engines measure density in this way. (TIP: You can automatically check your page’s keyword density using this more complex measure at GoRank.com.)
As you can see, you need to be very aware of what metric you’re talking about when you talk about “keyword density.” But let me reiterate; Especially when people talk about keyword density, they are talking about the simple measure.
What is the optimal keyword density?
And now to the point… What keyword density (of any type) should you be targeting on your website?
There is a lot of debate around this topic because search engine companies don’t reveal the details of their algorithms (as that would allow people to abuse the system). Instead, people who work in the SEO world should figure it out based on their experience.
A recent article by respected SEO and blogging expert Wayne Hurlbert (see Keyword Density: SEO Considerations) suggests that Google considers pages with a keyword density greater than 2% spam. It was this article that led me to analyze the keyword density of my copywriting website.
CASE STUDY
The website: This case study looks at the website of my copywriting and SEO writing business, Divine Write – http://www.divinewrite.com. For my main keyword, my site is now on page 1 of Google.com (out of about 900,000 search results).
Number of pages on the site: At the time of writing this article, my website contained a total of 53 pages.
Primary keyword phrase: “editor”
Average keyword density: Using the simple measure of keyword density discussed above, the average keyword density of my copywriting website is 1.9%. Using the complex measure it is 4.9%.
Keyword Density Range: Using the simple measure, my density ranged from 0.4% to 7.6%. Using the complex measure ranged from 1.6% to 17.5%
Some comments about the figures.
o The figures and corresponding ranking detailed in this case study may not be directly relevant to all sites. There’s a lot I don’t know about algorithms, and there are probably other factors at play that I don’t know about.
o Regarding Wayne Hurlbert’s article, it would appear that he is referring to keyword density calculated using the simple method discussed above.
o The rank numbers are noteworthy because they suggest you don’t need to be paranoid about having some pages very high density and others very low density.
Conclusion
A simple 1.9% keyword density can be enough for a first page ranking on Google.com (assuming you have enough quality backlinks – see http://www.divinewrite.com/SEOCEO.htm and http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm for more information).
Happy SEO writing!