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Understanding SEO is very important to do successful blogging. Only with search engine optimized content, a blog could have higher search engine rankings and thereby more traffic to blog. Here I discuss about an important SEO concept – Keyword Density.
Learning Points
- What is a keyword?
- What is keyword density?
- What is the ideal keyword density recommended?
- What are LSI keywords
- How to check keyword density?
Keyword and Keyword Density
Let us start with the basic things.
Keywords are considered as the key elements in SEO.
They are the words or phrases used by internet users while searching for content online. This is a simple one line keyword definition.
The trick here is to find out the keywords commonly used by online readers and use them extensively in your blog.
Using the right keywords could help in improve search engine rankings of your blog.
So now we know about keywords. Then what do you mean by keyword density. Here is a simple keyword density formula to explain this.
Keyword Density = (Number of Keywords in your article/Total Number of words in your article)*100
Let’s see a keyword density example:
If your article is of 500 words and keyword is used 10 times, then your keyword density percentage is 2%.
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This completes the basic learning in this tutorial. Now let us see what should be the right keyword density in your article for SEO.
The Optimum Keyword Density
There is a popular misconception among online publishers. Higher the number of keywords, higher would be your search engine ranking. In fact this is completely wrong.
Over use of keywords is regarded as Keyword Stuffing and could negatively affect your search engine rankings. There is always a keyword density limit.
So coming back to our question, how much keyword density is good for SEO?
There is no exact answer for this question. I will answer this question with two keyword density tips – based on facts as well as based on my experience in this field.
Google recommends a keyword density in the range 1-2%, while for Yahoo it is 3%.
The above recommendation is given by Sean Si, editor-in-chief of SEO Hacker.
From my opinion, concentrating too much on keywords would spoil the quality of your article.
So I would suggest bloggers to write longer articles and make the keywords appear natural in the article.
Also longer the article, more number of keywords can be incorporated into it. I prefer a keyword density of 2%.
Keyword Density effects on Search Engine Rankings – a high keyword density can negatively affect your SERPs (Image Source)
Again keyword density can vary from keyword to keyword.
Keywords can be broadly classified into two – long tail keywords and short tail keywords.
Short tail keywords are more generic keywords. Short tail keywords are to be used extensively in the article.
For example in this article, Keyword density is a short tail keyword. As you can see density is high for this keyword.
Long tail keywords are more specific in nature. How much keyword density is good for SEO is one example. High density for such keywords would ruin the quality of your article.
Watch this interesting video by Matt Cutts about ideal keyword density in an article.
Importance of Keyword Density
We have learnt about the optimal keyword density for online content. We have already seen that ‘KD’ is a metric used for measuring the number of keywords in a blog.
Now let us see the importance of keyword density from an SEO perspective.
We have already seen that keywords are the words used by internet users to search for content online. So if you are using those same words in your article, Google would be able to direct readers to your blogs.
Keyword density is one of the factors considered by Google algorithms while deciding on the search engine rankings.
[inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]A higher search engine ranking means more exposure and thereby more traffic for your site. [/inlinetweet]
But avoid the mistake of keyword stuffing. Use only the optimum number of keywords in your content.
Now let us discuss about another related SEO metric – Keyword Proximity.
Now we will understand how keyword proximity affects a website’s SEO.
Keyword proximity is the distance between individual keywords. Closer the keywords, the better with respect to SEO. Click here to learn more about Keyword Proximity.
Tools for Checking Keyword Density
You don’t need to count the number of keywords in your article to find out keyword density. There are various keyword density checker tools available online for this purpose. Read about a few keyword research tools below.
- SEO – Tool – Keyword Density Checker: This is a WordPress plug-in used for analyzing keyword density of single keywords as well as 2-3 word keyword phrases in your WordPress blog. Meta keywords suggestion is also possible with this plug-in. Click here to read more about this WordPress plug-in.
- Live Keyword Analysis: This is a very simple tool for checking keyword density online. Copy your text in the text box and enter the keywords in the allotted space. Keyword density for each keyword will get automatically updated in the screen. Click here to this website keyword checker tool.
- RankWatch Keyword Density tool: This is another free keyword tool offered by RankWatch. Click here to try RankWatch Keyword density tool.
These are some common keyword analysis tools available online. Apart from this –
- Google keyword analyzer tools
- Keyword density Moz tools
- SEO Centro Tool etc are also available for use
Apart from these keyword density calculator tools, keyword generators or keyword suggestion tools are also available for SEO purposes.
How to Improve Keyword Density for a Blog?
Keyword density can be improved if we are able to position keywords at right places and in the right amount across our articles.
Let us see few important tips regarding how to improve keyword density for blogs.
- Insert keywords into the title of the blog as well as headings and sub-headings in your blog. This would help both the search engine and readers in getting an understanding about the contents of your article.
- Use optimal number of keywords in the Meta description of the article. Presence of keywords in the Meta description of article is critical from SEO perspective.
- [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]Make your anchor texts keyword rich. Anchor texts are the clickable texts in your article through which you link your web page to other pages.[/inlinetweet]
- Try to use enough keywords in the first and last paragraphs of your article.
- The URL of your blog posts is another place where you can use keywords. URL of individual blog posts are also known as permalinks.
- Apart from this use keywords judiciously across your blog post. At the end your article should appear natural and not stuffed with keywords.
- Make use of LSI keywords. Read more about LSI keywords later in this article.
- Find out keyword density of your articles using online tools for ‘KD’ check, before publishing them.
Keyword Density and SEO – What All Have Changed?
Keyword density is one of the many factors considered by Google for site ranking. In fact the importance given by search engines like Google for keyword density is less today.
The age of keyword prominence in SEO is slowly getting over. Instead presence of backlinks and internal links are given more importance.
Another important change is the introduction of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) search engine algorithm. With LSI algorithm, Google started considering LSI keywords also for ranking of sites.
So What are LSI keywords?
LSI keywords are the keywords which are semantically related to the main keywords of your blog article.
With the new algorithm, Google search engines can understand about your content using the LSI or semantic keywords.
You can make use of this free online tool to research LSI keywords for your next blog post.
[inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]By using more of LSI keywords in the article, you can make your content look more natural and at the same time SEO friendly.[/inlinetweet]
We already discussed about the use of adding main keywords in the anchor text for back-links.
But if we are using the same anchor text for a lot of backlinks, your search engine ranking might take a hit. So instead you can add more of LSI keywords in anchor texts of backlinks.
Wrapping Up
So far in this article we have discussed all the aspects of Keyword density and its importance in SEO.
We discussed about the optimum keyword density, where to place keywords, dangers of keyword stuffing and how to improve keyword density for blog articles.
We even discussed about the reducing importance of Keyword density in SEO.
But still ‘KD’ is one of the factors considered by search engines for site ranking. Also it gives readers an idea about the blog post.
So even in the coming ages of SEO, Keyword density would remain as an important aspect of on-page SEO.
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