Salim Benhouhou   IT Support
The subject of Keywords & Keyword Density is a talking point
amongst SEO gurus worldwide and each has a different opinion of the
right way to approach keyword density and how to deploy keywords
throughout your content properly. The reason for the different opinions
(and almost every SEO expert has his/her own opinion about the “right way”
to do keyword optimizing) is that the ranking rules used by the Search
Engines are a well kept secret. We honestly do not know an absolute way
to use keywords the right way … we can really only guess.

In the early days of the modern Internet (say, the mid-to-late
nineties), the Search Engines used keywords and their keyword density
within the content of a web page as a very important website ranking
factors – that is, the more times a particular keyword or phrase
appeared in the content of a website, the more likely that the website
would rank well for a search of that keyword or phrase. If a web-page
had an enormous number of instances of the word “Squirrels”, then the search engines made the decision “This website is about squirrels” and that website would rank very well when someone searched for “Squirrels”.

These days, keywords are not such important factors and have fallen
behind the significance of a large number of inbound links to your site
but keywords remain a factor none-the-less. In fact, a great deal of
your S.E.O. efforts revolve around keywords; they are truly the
foundation of any SEO work that you do.

However, your understanding and ability to calculate your keyword
density is very useful for your work as an SEO marketer. It will allow
you to make informed decisions about the content on your website and how
to manipulate and optimize it for better ranking in the search engines.

There are automated tools for calculating keyword density it’s always
best to understand the inner workings of keyword density, so you can
make decisions about how to structure your content for yourself.


About Keyword Density



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.

Keyword density is a little bit of a tightrope walk. Too low a
keyword density and your keywords will have little (or almost no)
significance to your search engine ranking. Too high a keyword density
and you may be penalized by the search engines for “keyword stuffing”
(that is they will lower your placement in the search engine results
pages because you have used a keyword way too many times for it to
simply be a coincidence).

Many SEO experts consider the optimum keyword density to be 1% to 3%
percent and Google documentation states that your keyword density for
any keyword or phrase should be less than 5%. You must make your own
decisions about what is right for you but it seems like a keyword
density of around 2%-3% is just right.

Here I am going to show you how to calculate your keyword density and
help you optimize your website. There will be a little bit of
mathematics involved but nothing more complicated than a little
multiplication and division. How you calculate your keyword density
relies heavily on the circumstance in which you are using your keywords.


Keyword Density: The Maths!



To
calculate keyword density in its simplest form, you divide the number
of times that you have used a specific keyword by the total number of
words in the text that you are analyzing and multiply the result by one
hundred to achieve your percentage.

Therefore:

Keyword Density = (Nkr / Tkn) x 100

Where:

Density = your keyword density

Nkr = how many times you repeated a specific keyword

Tkn = total words in the analyzed text

So, if your article or piece of content (the text you are analyzing)
is 500 words in length and you have used your keyword 15 times, the
keyword density for that keyword is…

Keyword density = (Nkr / Tkn) x 100

= (15 / 500) x 100

= 0.03 x 100

=3

Keyword density = 3% !!!

That’s pretty straight-forward, huh?



POP-QUIZ!


If I have an article that is 2000 words in length and I have used the keyword “squirrel” 120 times, what is the keyword density for the word “Squirrel”? – What do you think; is this too much or too little? Will I be penalized by Google for Keyword Stuffing?



About Key-Phrases


Key-phrases add a new level of complexity to the keyword density
issue. People don’t only search for one word when they perform searches
on the internet. They may use a phrase which contains more than one
word. Users will search terms that contain more than one word usually
because they are looking for something specific.

If I were in search of a great waffle-house in my area (believe me, not such a crazy idea) I wouldn’t just search the keyword “waffles” in Google… This would return me a list of millions of results. I would instead search something like “waffles in Delaware”. “Waffles in Delaware” is an example of a key-phrase because it consists of more than one word as opposed to a keyword which is a single word.

So, someone trying to cater to my search would possibly try and optimize their content for that key-phrase – “Waffles in Delaware” and they would try and fine-tune the density of the key phrase to that coveted 1% – 3% range.

This changes the calculation that we must perform to calculate our
keyword density, because now we are dealing with an entity that contains
multiple terms.

This presents an interesting dilemma. To work out the keyword density of a key phrase, it could be tempting to use:

Density = (Nkr x (Nwp / Tkn)) x 100

Where:

Density = your keyword density

Nkr = how many times you repeated a specific key-phrase

Nwp = number of words in your key-phrase

Tkn = total words in the analyzed text

So, again, if we take my “Waffles in Delaware” example –
There are three words in my key-phrase and I have used that key-phrase
three times amidst my total word count of 500 words.

Density = (Nkr x (Nwp / Tkn)) x 100

= (3 x (3 / 500)) x 100

= (3 x 0.006) x 100

= 0.018 x 100

Density = 1.8%

There is a problem with this keyword density formula, however. One
cannot ignore the fact that keyword density refers to the frequency of
the appearance of one particular keyword. This means that “Waffles in Delaware” should be counted as if it was just one word amongst the rest of your text and not three words.

This idea brings us back to our original formula, Keyword Density = (Nkr / Tkn) x 100, and doing the calculation above gives us:

=(3 / 500) x 100

=0.006 x 100

=0.6%

which is a little low and very different. If you were using this
formula to calculate your keyword density, you would want to add a few
more instances of “Waffles in Delaware”

Furthermore, if you think about it, these key-phrases that consist of
more than just one word artifically inflate the total word count of
your text and as such it can be further argued that the total word count
of your analyzed text should be adjusted by removing the excess
key-phrase words from the total . From this we can derive the ultimate
Keyword density formula :

Density = ( Nkr / ( Tkn -( Nkr x ( Nwp-1 ) ) ) ) x 100

Using this formula, we can see that our keyword density for the key-phrase “Waffles in Delaware” is too low if we only use three instances of “Waffles in Delaware”.

Let’s imagine then that we upped-the-ante and now use the key-phrase “Waffles in Delaware” nine times, instead of just three:

= (Nkr / (Tkn – (Nkr x (Nwp – 1)))) x 100

= (9 / (500 – (9 x (3 – 1)))) x 100

= (9 / (500 – (9 x 2))) x 100

= (9 / (500 – 18)) x 100

= (9 / 482) x 100

= 0.0186721991701245 x 100

= 1.87%

That is better and within the safe keyword density to use.

This formula allows for a simple one-word keyword as well as for
key-phrases which consist of as many terms as you like and as such it
acts as the original formula.


Useful Tools


There are several online tools to help you calculate your keyword density. My favorite is live-keyword-analysis.com.
It’s really simple to use. Just pop in the text you are analyzing and
the software will give you percentage values for your keywords and
–phrases.

It’s also really interesting to have a look at some of the “rules” that this tool uses to examine keyword density (which can be found here:  live-keyword-analysis.com/keyword_analysis_rules.html). You will note, for example, that this keyword tool does not count any one or two letter words as well as certain html tags.

This MAY be something akin to the way that Google or Yahoo! view
keyword densities or part of the algorithm they use in their ranking
criteria. In truth we will never really know …  As this website itself
points out: “when is search engine optimization ever ultra precise?”

Please also visit the links below to try them out. You can use the
formulas above to decide how these online tools are calculating your
keyword density to decide if they are useful to you.

http://www.seomastering.com/keyword-density-analyzer.php

http://seotools.seozy.com/tools/keyword-density-checker/

http://www.seobay.com/tools/keyword-density-checker/

http://www.seocentro.com/tools/seo/keyword-density.html

http://seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density

http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

http://www.webcaretech.com/search-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/


Keyword Density vs. Quality Content


Aww, c’mon; that’s an easy one … Quality Content each and every day!

I mentioned earlier that keyword density is not that great of a ranking factor these days.

The real SEO power of your website is its ability to get your
visitors enjoying and linking to your content. Take this article for
example … I haven’t used a keyword formula once while I was writing it.

Always remember that keywords are secondary to the quality of the
content that you offer your visitors. Make it compelling, make it
interesting and make it useful … Then go back and optimize your keyword
density if you feel that it should be modified.

If I were to propose a formula for S.E.O., it may be something like this:

S.E.O. = High Quality Content + Loads of Inbound Links + [just a little keyword optimizing (if required)]
Jun 3rd 2011 10:20