The discussion of keywords always seems to begin any SEO chat. Whether you’re new to SEO or a veteran in the field, keyword density in a piece of content will always be important. The keywords that you decide to target, which should sum up the content on a particular page, is what search engine bots will use to determine where to index your website. In other words, keywords work like little symbols for to help determine the topic of your content.
It’s important to give the search engines this signal in order to help make sure your website is being put in front of the eyes of the right audience, but you don’t want to overdo it. You want to avoid keyword stuffing because this seems unnatural to readers (thus bringing down the quality of your content). At the same time, you want to make sure that that the keywords you are targeting are prevalent enough so that a search engine will be able to index your content correctly. Therefore it’s hard to avoid the inevitable question: What is the proper keyword density for SEO anyway?
What the Top Experts Are Saying About Keyword Density
Those who are familiar with SEO know that SEO never has a clear-cut answer. Unfortunately, keyword density also follows this pattern—there is no one right answer to this question. Back in December of last year, Matt Cutts gave this statement regarding keyword density:
“the first time you mention a word, you know, ‘Hey, that’s pretty interesting. It’s about that word.’ The next time you mention that word, ‘oh, OK. It’s still about that word.’ And once you start to mention it a whole lot, it really doesn’t help that much more. There’s diminishing returns. It’s just an incremental benefit, but it’s really not that large.”
Cutts continued to discuss the importance of making your keywords sound natural. However, although he may have given his usual vague answer, experts who have studied keyword density have come up with a few more concrete theories for business owners to consider:
- The Specific Search Engine Matters – Sean Si of SEO Hacker put a lot of emphasis on the idea that keyword density varies between search engines. He used pictures from gorank.com to determine that Yahoo recommends a keyword density of about 3% while Google seems to like sites that have a 1-2% keyword density. Below is an example of the chart he used to form this opinion:
- A Few Times Is Enough – Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz has come to the conclusion that putting your keyword in your content just a few times (in a “sensible way”) is enough to get you an 80-90% on-page optimization value. He explained that links are far more important for competitive search results (who links to you, what do they say about you, where do they come from, etc.).
- Position Matters – Aaron Wall of SEOBook agrees with most experts that keyword density isn’t the number one thing to worry about when trying to optimize a page. He explained that keyword presence is more important than keyword density. Two articles with the same keyword density could be filtered differently by Google simply because of the position of the keywords. If one article puts the keywords at the start of the title and their h1 tag, it will get filtered by Google better than an article that uses the same amount of keywords in odd spots of the content.
- It’s Too Tough to Calculate – Matt Ridout of SEO Unique Blog statedthat worrying about keyword density is “like saying to an artist you have too much red on your canvas, use a calculator to work out how much more to add or subtract from the painting.” Although keyword density matters, knowing the exact amount is irrelevant.
The vast majority of SEO experts, myself included, agree that keyword density is not something that should be overly important. Instead, a website should focus on where these keywords appear. Putting keywords in the Meta descriptions, title, and tags will give Google more than enough clues about the topic of the content.
Most importantly, content should be written for readers and not for search engines. It makes sense that an article about SEO will include the keyword “SEO” within the content.
What are your thoughts on keyword density? Is this something that you worry about or something that just comes naturally?
We recently did a series of blog posts on keyword research, selection, density and placement, which prompted me to review how I create posts.
Personally, I write first and add keywords later. However, this results in a fair bit of post-creative work, and having a keyword requirement would integrate the keyword into the articles in the first draft.
As a custom content provider, I see that many of my clients include a keyword or two in their instructions, and this really helps focus the writers and keep them on track. However, we also see orders with 5 or 10 keyword requirements, which dilutes the impact of any one keyword – and drives the writers nuts.
I think the best practice is to have one keyword in mind at the 1-3% density, used naturally throughout the content.
Don’t we have a fixed and measured % for google or is it going to a myth always.
I agree with all of the article subject and Christina Zila comment, focus on the subject and match the keywords to the article choosing low to medium competition keywords.
Match the words the same way you would keywords to adwords ads. If you are making a lemon cake you need lemons not curry powder. Possibly if you are a expectant mother lemon cake and curry powder might sound yummy.
People expect instant results from SEO. It can take years. Google might crawl 7 pages a day however the spiders might crawl the same pages and find updated or new pages and only pick up one or two new pages.
It is important to have internal threading to help the search engines find linked pages and additional keyword for the page website subject.
Changing Meta Header keywords and their positioning can change a page positioning quickly.
Take a look at small business sites and template sites, you will see how poorly they are setup by looking at page source. These are the people that need the work.
Lots of the sites are setup by friends of the family or someone in IT who does not understand SEO, to understand SEO you need to understand human nature, writing and much more.
I definitely agree with you both. Write first and then add the keywords later. It DOES take a long time to see results–the best thing you can do is be natural! Asking a writer to use a keyword at least five times isn’t going to do much. As I stated in the article, if your article is about “projectors,” you’re going to use that word plenty of times; no need to stuff it in anywhere.
To Kundan, I have a feeling the debate about keyword density will always continue. Google absolutely dislikes giving us exact information about their algorithms, so I don’t foresee any of that in the future in relation to keyword density.
Thank you all for reading!
Hey Amanda!
Thanks for pointing out the importance of Keyword density. All in all, being mindful of your keywords in a form that you’re still protecting your wordplay and ‘art’ in writing is the best thing. You’re hitting users and search engines in a way that pleases them both.
Kudos to you for this article!