Keyword Density in Website Marketing

by Adam Evans

Websites are prioritized by search engines based on relevant content. When writing content many words will be part of the keyword set in the site's HTML. There are limits to the percentage of keywords that will work in your favour.

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn't be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

If you repeat your keywords (known as metatags) with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site. A higher keyword density is advantageous when writing content for SEO directories who, while discouraging 'keyword stuffing' allow as many metatags as you can fit into a proper sentence. Keywords alone that don't compose a sentence aren't allowed in submissions and will result in a rejection.

Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page. Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is figured by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. Five keywords spread within one-hundred words. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, take a word count and insert five percent of keywords. You can verify this by using a Web Density Analyzer tool.

The accepted standard for a keyword density is between three and five percent to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it in site content. The title content can be stuffed with keywords however.

Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between three and five percent. Here is one way to check the keyword density: copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect; go to the 'Edit' menu and click 'Select All'. Now go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Word Count'. Write down the total number of words in the page. Next select the 'Find' function on the 'Edit' menu. Go to the 'Replace' tab and type in the keyword you want to find. 'Replace' that word with the same word, so you don't change the text.

When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page. Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.