At Seodays, we talked about keyword density and how important keyword density is when optimizing your content. However, not everyone understands how keyword density works… and how going overboard with keyword density can sink your entire page to the bottom of the search engine results, if it even ranks at all.

Keyword density is a tricky one because the percentage you should have can vary depending on the market area. In a non-competitive area, you don’t need to worry much about it too other than to make sure those keywords are on the page, preferably in the first half of the content rather than the second half. But if you are in a competitive area, you need to hit certain percentages of keyword density, and placing them at specific places within your content, without crossing that invisible line where your content becomes so keyword heavy that it becomes spammy.

So what exactly does keyword density mean? It refers to the number of times you use your keyword on the page when compared to the overall total number of words on the page. Keep in mind that it will include any text in the headers, footers and navigation. If you don’t want to figure it out yourself, there are many free keyword density checkers available on the net. Also keep in mind that it is useful to use it to check your competitor’s keyword density and the sites that are ranking at the top for your most important keywords.

After I have written carefully crafted content for SEO, the first thing I do is take a step back and look at the content. Then, I read it out loud. Don’t worry, you will only sound funny to anyone within earshot if you have gone overboard on your keyword density. When you read it out loud, does it sound natural or does it sound odd or fake? If it doesn’t sound natural, then chances are good that not only will readers think of it as spammy, but the search engines could too. So change up your keyword density a bit, or replace some keywords with similar related words instead, in order to get it sounding natural rather than spammy. Then read out loud and repeat the process.

Dave has another technique, although it might not quite catch the subtle nuances that reading out loud can bring to light. Dave prints the content, then takes a highlighter and highlights the keywords. If it looks like more highlighter than white, you need to tone those keywords down a bit too.

If you are hiring authors to create content for you on certain keywords, you will definitely need to pay attention to that density. Especially if you are picking up content for $5 an article, the keyword density will either be non-existent page or will be so high that it would trip even the most basic spam filter. It is definitely a case of getting what you pay for… content writers who can do this correctly are worth their weight in gold when it comes to writing quality content.

The most important thing to keep in mind when crafting content with appropriate keyword density is that while you need to have the bots in mind while creating it, the visitor who lands on your page is the one the content should be written to. If the content is over clocked with keywords, it is extremely easy for them to hit that back button and go to your competitor’s site instead. So pay attention to your density and use the ways listed above to check that it isn’t too spammy.

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Written on April 3, 2007 at 7:13 am and filed under Keywords, Search Engine Optimization, Writing Content. You can make a comment, or trackback from your own site.