Search Engine Optimization - What is the Right Keyword Density?

Good keyword density is an important element in a successful search engine optimization campaign. It is an indicator of the number of times the selected keywords of your optimization plan appears on your web pages.

In your optimization plan, make sure that you do not overuse keywords just to get a higher keyword density. Keywords should be just sufficient enough to appear at importance places such as title tag, header tags, first and last paragraph of your web pages.

If you repeat your keywords too often, search engines may view your website as a span site and may drop your website from their search result pages. Therefore, it is extremely important for you to abide the standard and not overdo it.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a web page. Let us take for example that you have 100 words on a webpage of your site. These words do not include HTML codes. Then you use a keyword for 5 times in the content. Now in order to derive the keyword density, you need to divide the total number of keywords by the total number of words that appear on that page. In this case, it is 5 divided by 100, getting a result of 0.05. As I have mentioned earlier on, keyword density is always expressed as a percentage. Therefore, multiply 0.05 by 100 = 5%.

The accepted standard of keyword density is between 3% and 5%. You should not exceed this number if you want search engines to recognize your site. You should also keep the density between the above range for all the other pages of your website.

To check the keyword density of your web pages, you can do the followings:

1. Copy and paste the entire content of a web page into a word-processing program such as Microsoft Words.

2. Go to the "Edit" menu and click "Select All" to select all the content. Now go to "Tools" of the menu and select "Word Count". This will give you the total words of the web page.

3. Now select the "Find" function from the "Edit" menu. Go to the "Replace" tab and type in the keyword you want to find. "Replace" that keyword with the same word, so you do not change the text.

4. When you are done with the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words that you replaced. That will give you the number of times a keyword appears on the web page.

5. Now you are able to calculate the keyword density of your web page by using the formula above.

Now you are ready to work on your optimization plan with this valuable keyword density information.

About The Author-- Cheow Yu Yuan is the co-founder of HomeBizGears.com, providing search marketing services. Check out more about Search Engine Optimization at www.homebizgears.com

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