What Exactly is Keyword Density?

Table of contents:

• So What Is Keyword Density?
  • Does Keyword Density Matter?
• Keyword Stuffing And Best Practices
• Keyword Tips To Optimize Your Site
  • How SpyFu Can Help You
• Keywords Can Make Or Break Your Site

So What Is Keyword Density?

One of the many key trends in SEO is the ability to optimize at the page-level in order to get the best results for your site. Keyword density is one of these optimization elements in SEO that refers simply to the amount of times you have used a given keyword on a specific webpage.

This can be displayed as a percentage and is used to represent how frequently targeted keywords appear in comparison to the rest of the document. By analyzing this percentage, you will be better informed as to whether or not your keyword appears too many times, or not enough. In summary, it is a great indicator of where your content needs work and what you can do to improve it!

Keyword density is a powerful metric used by all search engines in order to figure out a ranking for your site. Because of this, it’s important to be able to understand the impact the percentage equation can be for your site! With the following equation you will be much more able to judge the content at hand and see if your keyword density needs tweaking:

In other words, if you have a blog post of 100 words, and you used the keyword four times, we get: (4/100×100) = 4%

This equation is incredibly useful in order to determine the relative use of the keywords you have created, letting you know if you need to use them more or less.

Does Keyword Density Matter?

Yes, very much so! In the early days of the internet, you could get by with stuffing as many keywords into a blog as possible, but nowadays, keyword density and overly-long keyword chains are definitely a no-go. One of the most fundamental aspects of the algorithms of top search engines is that they are focused on readability and user satisfaction. This means that stringing together a long list of keywords gives you a negative response – Google, for instance, can tell if you’re using too many keywords!

This means that finding the best strategy for your keyword use is of paramount importance. You need to find the proper balance in all your written content in order to rank as highly as you want! One of the biggest problems, however, is the relative lack of rules for this space. While it is great on the one hand to not be bound by anything arbitrary that will compromise your artistic vision, it’s also problematic in that rarely do people know precisely what to do in order to get the success they want!

Keyword Stuffing And Best Practices

We understand now that top search engines negatively penalize you for ramming too many keywords into a small space (or, ‘Keyword Stuffing’), so this must be accounted for when planning out content for your site. The algorithms nowadays are much more sophisticated than they ever used to be and pages with too many keywords – sometimes entire websites – can be flagged in response. This means that moderating your use is essential.

On the other hand, blogs and other content with very minimal density don’t trigger desired SEO results, so it’s incredibly important not to spread yourself too thin either! You still want to use keywords for their intended purpose and choosing the right amount is crucial to your success.

For that reason, we at Delante recommend the use of keywords at a density of no greater than 3%, but preferably around the 1-2% mark. This will ensure maximum readability and limit the chances of search engines thinking you are much too dependent on certain words!

Keyword Tips To Optimize Your Site

Since you are working with very thin margins on your keywords, it pays to understand ways to make your keywords ‘last longer’ as it were. In other words, by modifying your keywords slightly, you can get more mileage out of the concept than would otherwise be possible if you were strictly sticking to just the word itself.

An example of this is adding prefixes, suffixes, and more to a given word to allow for variations. Team lead, for instance, becomes team leads, team leader, and team-leading.

Semantic options exist as well and are likewise essential for your use. If ‘team lead’ was your key phrase, you can modify it to talk about leading teams, lead teams, or similar.

Another example that you can use is called “long-tail keywords” which essentially means being more specific with your keywords. In the ‘team lead’ example above, you could lengthen the phrase to ‘video game leader’ or ‘marketing manager’ or similar so that you can attack the core of your project from different angles.

How SpyFu Can Help You

This analytic tool is extremely powerful when used to understand your competition better. It gives a detailed analysis of your ad competition based on metrics you ask it to look into and it allows for you to quickly access details about keywords and much other SEO-relevant information. In short, if you want to know what those in the same business as you are doing, SpyFu is a great way to do it!

SpyFu is actually incredibly simple to use, making your strategic planning very convenient indeed. :

1. Enter the website you want to analyze into the search bar. This can be your own website, which you will see competitors for, or a competitor website you can analyze on its own merits,

2. Identify the top organic searches that show up for the query,

3. Click on the “competitor shared keywords” area to get a comprehensive rundown of the keywords most used.

This will allow you to see precisely what your competition is doing and allow you to develop a plan of action based on what is already succeeding! Analyzing the competition is one of the most important things you can do to properly plan out and optimize your SEO, and studying keyword usage is a great place to start.

Keywords Can Make Or Break Your Site

Keywords are one of the most difficult parts of optimizing a website and are absolutely essential to get right in order to succeed. Whether you have too many uses or not enough, both can be extremely hazardous to the overall health of your site’s SEO rankings. With this guide, you should now have the information necessary to begin your research for your own keyword use. By following the steps laid out above, you’ll be able to optimize your own content and see yourself raise your site’s ranking substantially!