Understanding Keyword Density

It is difficult to stress the importance of keyword density to someone that isn't in the business and has little or no understanding of how search engines manage to pick up on the sites that are going to rank well within them. It is important though to understand that there are many different algorithms that are used to determine this rank and keyword density plays an important role in making one website stand out from the other competitors in search of the same keyword love and recognition by various search engines.

To get a good understanding of the basics when it comes to keyword density, it is a good idea to know the answer to the questions below.

What does “keyword density” mean anyway?

This is a good question, especially to answer for someone that is new to Internet marketing. Keyword density is basically the number of times a particular keyword phrase appears within the content when compared to the number of total words within the content. It's basically a percentage of how often the keyword phrase appears on any given page within the web page. A higher keyword density indicates that the instances of a keyword phrase within the content is higher and a lower KWD indicates that there are fewer instances of the keyword phrase on the page.

Does keyword density really matter?

Yes. The major search engines all use keyword density in the algorithms that are used to determine page rank for your website. What this means is that for a web page to be ranked well on any of the big three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) it needs to have decent keyword density. The problem is that these algorithms are subject to change and you will need to go in once in a while in order to 'tweak' the keyword density in order to boost your rankings.

Is there one specific rule for keyword density?

Beware those who come bearing gifts of the “secret” formula for keyword density and search engine rankings. There are many reasons why this is a bad thing to fall for. Not the least of these reasons though is the fact that these algorithms are constantly changing and that each of the big 3 has something that is a little bit different to determine which websites rank best. In other words, no one knows the one secret formula that will bring all websites to the top of the pile.

You can bet if someone does figure it out by some miracle, he or she will not be so eager to share it. There are rules of thumb that can be followed though and will help you keep your website ranking near the top time after time. That rule of thumb is to keep the KWD below five percent so that you aren't unintentionally penalized for what the search engines identify as keyword stuffing. Keep these things in mind as you figure out which keyword density numbers feel most natural to you and which ones provide the best results in traffic and sales.