23 replies to this topic

[deldove]

hi

ive read things here and there like 'no more than 30% keyword density' and im wondering what this means more precisely and do i need a tool to calculate it?

[torka]

Hi, Deldove. Two pieces of advice:

1. Stop paying attention to people who advise you to shoot for some specific keyword density; they do not know what they're talking about. Period.

2. Measure it however you want to, or don't measure it at all. It won't make any difference.

Write for human visitors. Include your target phrases, but don't overdo it. What "overdoing it" means will vary from one page to another, depending on many factors. Try reading your text out loud -- preferably into some sort of voice recorder, then play it back. If it includes your target phrase, but it doesn't sound repetitious to your ear, then you're probably on the right track.

For more info, read this issue of Jill's newsletter -- scroll down to Karon's article on "The Magical Keyword Density Formula".

HTH!

--Torka

[Yoshimi]

even if you decide you still want to measure it, I would suggest that you think carefully about the advice you have been given, 30% kd for a term is 1/3 or all words on the page, so a 30% kd fo the term seo in a page would look something like:

seo is great when you seo a page, seo for google. seo is good if seo is done well. We do seo, good seo in fact our seo is best. Others don't seo as well as we seo, which means that if you want seo, good seo and cheap seo. you should use our seo as it's the best seo. we seo with good seo techniques, making sure your seo is good enough seo to get you seo rankings in the search engines, who like seo.

[copywriter]

We have a whole collection of keyword density articles pinned at the top of the forum that will be helpful to you.

[ogormask]

I wonder about something when we talk about this subject. For one thing I realize that keyword density for the most part is a dead subject but that first article you linked to was dated 2004. I am sure 99% is relevant today but I wonder about 1 key piece. The bolding, italicizing, h1 tags etc. I think I know the answer but I wonder if any or all or none of these are used in 2009? I realize no one knows for sure but maybe they do? It was my understanding everything but h1 tags are irrelevant. So what is true as of 2009?

The reason I ask is because information seems so convuluted. Sometimes an article written in 2000 is true today but not always and I am sure you wouldnt link to an article if it werent true but I just wonder about that one small part.

[copywriter]

I can't point you to a specific source, but as far as I know, you still get a brownie point or two for specially formatted text. Granted, it's not much, but if it's relevant to the end user, I include this formatting when possible. As always, don't go bolding, italicizing and inserting bullet lists just to try and gain extra points with Google.

[ogormask]

Yeah I do that when I write blogs but I do for the reader. I guess I just see some people say it doesnt count and some say it does. I wonder how much? I guess as was pointed out in that article no one really knows!

[MaryKrysia]

It's true that no-one really knows the truth about Keyword Density. I have tried a few different ideas in this area and have not seen a huge difference in rankings either way.

[Randy]

Well, the question has been asked and answered by Googlers and other search engine reps numerous times at different conferences and even in the Webmaster Chats Google puts on from time to time.

There's a relatively brief summary of the October 2008 Webmaster Chat on Matt's blog down in the comments. In fact, the summary is probably a good read for quick hitting points on lots of subjects.

In the above reference the quote is:

Keyword Density

Not really a factor. Yes keyword should be present but density is not important. Include the keyword but make writing sound natural.

The question comes up at absolutely every Webmaster Chat I've been able to attend in person or read transcripts of after the fact. Matt himself answered one such question in the June 2008 chat, which SEO Roundtable has an archive of if you're interested.

In this one the quote is a bit more nebulous, with the details being:

Antony Johnson - 5:23 pm

Q: Hi Matt, Are there any guidelines available on keyword density we have pages that are about 1 single subject and the keyword density is quite high

Matt Cutts - 5:27 pm

A: Antony, you may not believe this, but we tend not to think much about KW density here at Google, b/c our algorithms handle it pretty well. My advice is to pull in an innocent/non-search friend and have them read the text. If they raise their eyebrow, ...

Then for more fun, Matt even has several posts about the subject of KWD on his blog. The one I always liked the best was this old one from 2006 where he states

in the on-page space, I’d recommend thinking more about words and variants (the “long-tail”) and thinking less about keyword density or repeating phrases.

The comments on that one are a hoot! All of the folks busting Matt's chops for pumping up his Keyword Density for the phrase "SEO".

At the end of the day they all say the same thing some of us have for the better part of a decade now. Write for real people, not the search engines. If you do this one simple thing, and make it so that they can easily understand what you've written, you'll never be in any danger of crossing some imaginary line in the sand. And your prized keyword phrases will almost magically appear in just the right places in your copy.

[Jill]

I don't personally believe in any of it. Not kw density, not bolding nor H1s. But I'm often alone in my belief!

[Cathubodua]

Hello, everyone.

I don't believe in keyword density either, because now it's considered spam and completely annoys the readers.

However, I always use my top keywords in my posts titles, meta tags and URLs (I manage a blog on web copywriting, written in my native language, Romanian) and I try to have a good internal linking with relevant anchor texts, which basically tells Google that one post is relevant for, let's say, SEO Copywriting and another one is relevant for Bounce Rate and so on. Tags may also help (strictly speaking of my blog posts).

I'm quite new at web copywriting (only 3 years of experience), but I try to read a lot, learn from the best and write relevant content for my blog readers.

Hope this helped a bit.

[1dmf]

I don't personally believe in any of it. Not kw density, not bolding nor H1s. But I'm often alone in my belief!

hmmm, if you're the only one who beleives this, what does that indicate?

I beleive in KD, i'd like to see you rank a page (without a billion IBL's) for a keyword where the KD < 1!

I mean surely you can't rank a page for a KWD that isnt on the page, therefore KD exists!

It's also true to say that KD exists for penalties, a high KD = KWD spamming doesn't it?

Bolding and headings also count, if used in a semantic way, and the purpose for what they were intended, to provide information in an easy to understand and gramatical manner (apparently the em tag actually makes the screen reader get louder, ie. emphasise the word).

All that equals doing the right thing for the user/visitor, which is exactly what you should be doing for SE's so we are all told, so therefore, by powers of deduction all of the above has an effect, some good and some can be bad!

But you know me, I have a laser scalpel and can split a hair from 40 paces!

[copywriter]

I beleive in KD, i'd like to see you rank a page (without a billion IBL's) for a keyword where the KD < 1!

Happens every day. This blog post of mine deals with that exact topic and has specific examples. The same goes for the copy on my own websites. Not a huge amount of links, but top 5 rankings (many #1s).

I didn't include BL numbers on the examples in the post, but it's easy enough to check. The first one had only 144 BLs.

Thanks Randy for the quotes from Matt. Great info!!

[Jill]

Of course "keyword density" exists as a concept. What doesn't exist is a specific keyword density percentage that is the best to use for SEO purposes.

[copywriter]

Yes, you are correct. To just say "keyword density" means nothing. That's just the percentage of keywords used in the entire text. It's the specific number (%) that is debated.