There has been some discussion in the SEO world around if keyword density still matters. The reason why people are talking about this in SEO circles is because Matt Cutts discussed it in a recent Webmaster Help session. Below you can see the questionable quote and video:
“The way that modern search engines, or at least Google, are built is that the first time you mention a word, you know, ‘Hey, that’s pretty interesting. It’s about that word.’ The next time you mention that word, ‘oh, OK. It’s still about that word.’ And once you start to mention it a whole lot, it really doesn’t help that much more. There’s diminishing returns. It’s just an incremental benefit, but it’s really not that large.”
So, there you have it, Google still values keyword density but if you add the keyword too much to a blog you can run into keyword stuffing. Now, this is very analogy in general, by design, because it depends on how long your blog is and the target keyword or secondary keywords you want to go after.
In this blog I am going to teach you my keyword density techniques for on-page SEO optimization so that it can help your blog or articles rank on Google for a given keyword faster.
First, What is Keyword Density?
Keyword density describes the frequency of a keyword phrase within the text of a particular web page or blog, generally represented as a percentage. You can calculate this figure by dividing the number of times a keyword phrase appears by the total word count on the page.
For instance, if the phrase “SEO Services in New York” appears six times in a 600-word blog post, its keyword density is 1%.
What Should My Keyword Density Be?
The easy answer to this is it depends on how long your article is but generally it should be between 1% or 3% for the keyword you are targeting.
There is no such thing as an ideal keyword, so the best thing to do is use a keyword density tool checker. The free density checker tool I use is SEO Review Tools. You can find the keyword density of a blog by either putting the website link or adding the full text. SEO Review Tool will scan the link or text and give you three sections.
The most used one-word keywords
The most used two-word keywords
The most used three-word keywords
Now depending on what keyword you are targeting it will fall in one of these three categories. From there you can see if the keyword you are targeting is the most used keyword by percentage on that page. If it is not, you will need to either add your target keyword more in the blog or reduce the number of times that non-target keyword shows.
Implementing Keyword Density Processes and Protocols
This keyword density process might sound easy if you are the sole creator of the content but if you are working with a team of copy writers or a compliance team this can be difficult. In most cases the content writer will have issues trying to make that target keyword the densest keyword on the pages and will give push back because they feel you are ruining their articles flow.
The best way to handle this is to explain why keyword density is so important to Google. A good example is to explain if Google scans the website and can’t understand what the topic or keyword is than they will have trouble ranking the page for that keyword. The entire reason why we are creating this blog is to get traffic and hopefully conversions to our site but if no one can find this blog on Google because they can’t rank it than what is the point of us creating this article if no one is going to be able to see it.
Another good way to work with the content team on keyword density is by you helping the copy writers seed the target keyword in the article until it is the densest keyword. By showing them how to do it they start to see how easy and natural you can seed keywords into a blog without hurting the integrity of the blog. If the copy writer is too busy to do this themselves then ask them if you can properly seed the keyword in the article before it moves to the next step in the process. They will more then likely allow you to do this because it takes the work off their shoulders and honestly content writers don’t understand the value of SEO, so they don’t care about keyword density.
Conclusion
Keyword density is not the reason why your content will rank number one on Google for a specific keyword, but it is still one of Googles ranking factors when deciding on what the blog or article is about and knowing the correct keyword to rank you for. At the end of the day Google has over 200 ranking factors they look for when ranking websites and pages, and this is one small but important step to take when trying to SEO optimize your site.
Think of Googles algorithm like a check list. They look at a bunch of ranking factors, some more important than others, and they more checks you get on this ranking check list the more likely you are to rank for the keyword you are targeting. There is a lot more that goes into this like keyword competitiveness, keyword duplication, and domain authority but if you are checking off the little optimization efforts it will add up and Google will understand the page more effectively and how to rank it. If your website needs help with being SEO optimized or having good keyword density let our team of experts help.