With the decline of meta-tags, keyword density ranges have
become very important. They’ve also become very controversial.
Here’s the thing: you want a high enough keyword density—at least
7%--that your keywords rank highly in the bigger search engines,
such as Google, Yahoo, DogPile, and HotBot.
But, as we discussed, you don’t want your keyword densities
so high that they turn your content into over-hyped gobbledygook,
nor do you want to raise a red flag when the spiders come crawling
over your content. If your keyword density is 20% or more, the
search engine will most likely red-flag you for “keyword stuffing”
and penalize you by moving you down in the search results.
Thus, keyword density ranges are controversial. To make
things worse, different search engines have different algorithms.
One of them might thing an SEO keyword density of 18% is fine,
another may not.
The only way a search engine can figure out just what your
page is about is to search for the keywords you use. Those keywords
don't necessarily have to be right there on the page—they can be in
the title and in links that will lead to the page. Having said that,
though, keywords that appear on your page are certainly the most
common way that search engines use to decide what your page is all
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about. Keyword density refers to the ratio of keywords to the total
number of words on the page.
Now I want you to look again at the paragraph above. There
are 95 words total, and I used the word "keywords" exactly five
times. The keyword ratio for the paragraph, then, is 5 divided by 95
times 100, or about 5.26%. Easy math, correct? You bet.
But how much does that stuff matter?
Well, it’s not a matter of life and death, but it’s pretty
important. You see, when a search engine compares two pages to
figure out which one ought to rank higher, keyword density will
factor into it—usually pretty significantly. In fact, all other factors
being equal (which is pretty much impossible, but let's pretend), the
page with the higher keyword density will generally rank higher.
However, simple as Keyword Density is, it can also get really
complex in a hurry. Do plurals or other stemmed variations of your
keyword count as keywords? Should stop words, which are those
common words you see all the time like "a" or "the," be ignored
when calculating density?
Should you include off-page content, like meta tags and
titles, in your calculations? What about keyword frequency or
keyword proximity or keyword prominence? And like I’ve said
before, bear in mind that if your keyword density gets too high,
search engines just might realize it and penalize your page.
But now, hold on. Even though keyword densities are
getting to be a complex science with lots of complicated algorithms,
you can do it!
Keyword densities really are not rocket science, so don’t fall
into the trap of making things more complicated than they need to
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be. Go to Google and search on "keyword density." The first three
pages should be ones that provide about 20 or 25 different tools for
calculating KWD.
Now all you have to do is pick one that feels user-friendly to
you and use it to optimize your web page, noting the results. Now
try something else: run a Google search on your keyword, and run
the analysis on the first ten sites. Take a good hard look at the
results. From this, you should get a good idea how your page will
compare with the ten top ranking pages in Google, at least in terms
of keyword density.
Here’s the thing that frustrates people, though: if you go and
do that with three or four different KWD tools, you will no doubt
come up with different numbers, but the graph of those numbers
will look very similar. Don’t worry about it, because the numbers
aren’t the most important thing. You only care how they compare
to each other.
Something else you'll probably discover is that keyword
density is not a very good indicator of rank. The top ranking page
may have a much lower density than the page at number ten, for
example.
Why does this happen, when you work so hard to get your
keyword density high? It happens because KWD is only one factor
among many. It's important to a good ranking, but it's not the be-all
and end-all of a good ranking. What you really want to know from
your analysis is the range of density values that rank well. Chances
are good that if your page is below that range, getting on page one
to compete with the big dogs will be tough, and if you're above that
range, the search engines may think you’re “keyword stuffing” and
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you’ll be penalized. Just remember, though, the numbers are
guidelines you should know, not carved-in-stone rules that forever
define your fate. Experiment!
You may hear self-proclaimed website gurus say that
keyword density should always run between two and eight percent
or whatever the current numbers being quoted in forums across the
Internet happen to be. That’s partly true. Those numbers are
probably fairly accurate for most keywords. They’re based on
averages and it’s always good to stick close to an average.
But there’s a problem. Here’s how the problem goes: the
most commonly used letter in English is the letter “E.” If you wrote
a ten word sentence, it would be much easier to use the letter E five
times in that sentence than it would be to use, say, the letter Z five
times. Letters aren’t an even distribution. Neither are keyword. Big
shock, huh?
Remember what I said earlier about not sounding awkward
in your content? Well, the biggest thing about keyword density is
that it must read well and sound very natural to a user. It’s useless
to get a page one ranking if your content is very lame.
Like the letter E, some keywords are easy to use a lot of while
still sounding natural. For instance, if your keyword was “grass” on
a site about lawn care, it wouldn’t be hard to use “grass” a lot.
But some keywords just don’t lend themselves to being used
a lot—like “quince.” (It’s a type of fruit.) Here’s the choice to be
made: you can use an average range, which will work well most
times, or you can spend time analyzing the top ten pages to find the
best range for that particular keyword and be sure you're not trying
to optimize for a Z or a quince.
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Frustrated? Don’t be! It isn’t that hard. If you’re still
confused, check out a competitor's page in Google's cache (which
highlights the keywords for you) to get a good visual feel for density.
Another good tip is to perform a “real person sanity check”
on your content. Reading your optimized content out loud several
times, and try to get a natural flow that will make the copy draw
users who will come back. Then take a hard look at your content. If
you can substitute a keyword for a pronoun without loosing your
flow, do it.
For instance, if your keyword is “hammock”, instead of a
sentence saying, “I love to lie in it,” say, “I love to lie in my
hammock.”
4.1 Do-it-Yourself SEO
There are a ton of free online SEO tools available on the
internet. Most feature some very impressive statistics and
information to help you optimize your website, analyze search
engine positions, research your competitors, and lots of other
things.
There are two ways you can use these free online SEO tools:
(1) If you’re new to SEO, these tools provide excellent
insight on how a website is performing and ranking.
Use them to highlight issues and trends with your
website and provide indicators for where optimization
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work is necessary.
(2) If you’ve had some experience with SEO, these
tools will act as a complement to the more specialized
SEO tools, like WebPosition Gold or SpyderOpts. You
can also use them to supplement an SEO’s internal
knowledge base and experience.
Here are some choice tools for both new SEO users and more
experience SEO users:
Keyword Research Tool
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml/
Use this to research appropriate words and phrases to include in
your webpage's body text so that you’ll rank higher. It’s easy to use.
You just enter the word or phrase you want to be found under, then
the tool suggests additional words and phrases for you to consider
using. You also have the option to select from a range of top search
engines, e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Teoma, etc.
Keyword Analyser Tool
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis
This one will read the body of the page and give you a report on
what words are used and how many times they are used.
Since most engines rank sites depending on that site’s keyword
density (which typically ranges between 3% and 9%), this is a really
good tool to have.
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Search Engine Position Checker Tool
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine
This tool checks to see if your website appears in the first fifty
results in major search engines for your designated keyword or
phrase. If your URL is present, the tool outputs what position it
occupies. This tool also lets you know if any other URLs from your
domain appear in the search results.
Link Popularity Tool
http://www.instantposition.com/link_popularity_check.cfm
This tool will measure the total number of links or "votes" that a
search engine finds for your website. One of the best feature is that
besides tabulating data, it also produces a very cool graph of the
resulting data. One other nice feature is the ability to compare your
website to your competitors to help you with your overall marketing
strategy.
Meta Tag Generator
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/meta-tag
This automatically generates a Meta Keyword tag by reading the
page you specify, removing common words from it, and picking the
most used words on the page. Extra weight is given to words in a
heading tag (etc.)
Search Term Suggestion Tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
This one tells you how many times a certain keyword was searched
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for at Overture.com. It will also show all related searches for that
keyword. It’s a good thing to use to determine search frequency
among related keyword phrases
Search Engine Optimization Tool
http://www.instantposition.com/seo_doctor.cfm
This is a tool with a lot of power. It tests the performance of a web
site by analyzing a page by important criteria such as title and
content. Then it ranks the page against the criteria that the top
search engines use. And as if that isn’t enough, it also provides SEO
advice to improve your overall ranking. The report it puts out is well
laid out and easy to read.
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