keyword density in search engine optimization
Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.In the context of search engine optimization keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase. 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 keyword and 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.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.However, from a purely mathematical viewpoint, one cannot ignore the fact that the original concept of keyword density refers to the frequency (Nkr) of appearance of a particular keyword in a dissertation. Thus, a "keyword" consisting of multiple terms, e.g. "blue suede shoes" should be considered an entity in itself. It is the frequency of the phrase "blue suede shoes" within a dissertation that drives the key(phrase) density. Thus it is "more" mathematically correct for a "keyphrase" to be calculated just like the original calculation, but considering the word group, "blue suede shoes," as a single appearance, not three. Thus: Density = ( Nkr / Tkn ) * 100. Furthermore, under closer inspection, one can see that these 'keywords(kr)' that actually consist of several words, artificially inflate the total word count of the dissertation. Therefore, it could be argued that the purest mathematical representation should adjust the total word count (Tkn) lower by removing the excess key(phrase) word counts from the total. Thus: Density = ( Nkr / ( Tkn -( Nkr * ( Nwp-1 ) ) ) ) * 100. where Nwp = the number of terms in the keyphrase. This general formula allows that the total word count will be unaffected if the key(phrase) is indeed a single term, so it acts as the original formula.
Source Link:Wikipedia.org
What is the Proper Keyword Density for SEO
The discussion of keywords always seems to begin any SEO chat. Whether you’re new to SEO or a veteran in the field, keyword density in a piece of content will always be important. The keywords that you decide to target, which should sum up the content on a particular page, is what search engine bots will use to determine where to index your website. In other words, keywords work like little symbols for to help determine the topic of your content.It’s important to give the search engines this signal in order to help make sure your website is being put in front of the eyes of the right audience, but you don’t want to overdo it. You want to avoid keyword stuffing because this seems unnatural to readers (thus bringing down the quality of your content). At the same time, you want to make sure that that the keywords you are targeting are prevalent enough so that a search engine will be able to index your content correctly. Therefore it’s hard to avoid the inevitable question: What is the proper keyword density for SEO anyway?
Top Experts Are Saying About Keyword Density
Those who are familiar with SEO know that SEO never has a clear-cut answer. Unfortunately, keyword density also follows this pattern—there is no one right answer to this question. Back in December of last year, Matt Cutts gave this statement regarding keyword density: “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.” Cutts continued to discuss the importance of making your keywords sound natural. However, although he may have given his usual vague answer, experts who have studied keyword density have come up with a few more concrete theories for business owners to consider:The Specific Search Engine Matters – Sean Si of SEO Hacker put a lot of emphasis on the idea that keyword density varies between search engines. He used pictures from gorank.com to determine that Yahoo recommends a keyword density of about 3% while Google seems to like sites that have a 1-2% keyword density. Below is an example of the chart he used to form this opinion:
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| Sean Si of SEO Opinion chart |
A Few Times Is Enough – Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz has come to the conclusion that putting your keyword in your content just a few times (in a “sensible way”) is enough to get you an 80-90% on-page optimization value. He explained that links are far more important for competitive search results (who links to you, what do they say about you, where do they come from, etc.).
Position Matters – Aaron Wall of SEOBook agrees with most experts that keyword density isn’t the number one thing to worry about when trying to optimize a page. He explained that keyword presence is more important than keyword density. Two articles with the same keyword density could be filtered differently by Google simply because of the position of the keywords. If one article puts the keywords at the start of the title and their h1 tag, it will get filtered by Google better than an article that uses the same amount of keywords in odd spots of the content.
It’s Too Tough to Calculate – Matt Ridout of SEO Unique Blog statedthat worrying about keyword density is “like saying to an artist you have too much red on your canvas, use a calculator to work out how much more to add or subtract from the painting.” Although keyword density matters, knowing the exact amount is irrelevant.
The vast majority of SEO experts, agree that keyword density is not something that should be overly important. Instead, a website should focus on where these keywords appear. Putting keywords in the Meta descriptions, title, and tags will give Google more than enough clues about the topic of the content.
Most importantly, content should be written for readers and not for search engines. It makes sense that an article about SEO will include the keyword “SEO” within the content.
Source Link: www.highervisibility.com
