Keyword Density – An Important Factor in SEO Strategies

Keyword density is one of the important factors in search engine optimization algorithms to get the higher ranking for your websites in the search engines.

What is keyword density?

Keyword density is defined as the percentage of the total number of times the main target keyword(s) appears on the web page compared to the total number of words on the web page.

Keyword density (%) = (total number of times the main target keyword(s) appears on the web page / total number of words on the web page) * 100

Why keyword density is important?

As keyword density is one of the important factors in the search engine algorithm and based on that the search engines categorizes the web page, if we maintain the good keyword density for our web pages, chances to get higher ranking in the search engine will increase. So, it is important.

How keyword density is important?

Our main target is the get more traffic to our website. For that, we have selected the search engines as one of your sources. So, to get traffic from search engines, we need to understand the search engines algorithms first. The search engines display the websites in the search result page of the particular keyword or key phrase based on the relevancy of the web page content. As search engines are not the human beings to check the relevancy of the content manually, it is programmed to check the relevancy and named it as keyword density. So, this keyword density is one of the methods used to check the web page content relevancy. Also, based on this keyword density, the search engines will categorize the web page that this web page is relevant to what keyword(s) and display accordingly.

Appropriate keyword density (KD) range?

Keyword density range differs from one search engine to another. Google requires a maximum of 3% and Yahoo & MSN requires 5-6%.

To get listed in the top of the search engine search result page, the web page should maintain the minimum KD limit. For Google, there is no minimum KD limit mentioned. So, it is better to maintain 2%. For yahoo & MSN, it should be 5%. To stay away from any bad actions like banning your web page by the search engines, the web page KD value should not be more than the maximum KD limit. For Google, it should not exceed 3%. For yahoo and MSN, it should not exceed 6%.

Also, you can find websites displaying in the search engine search result page for a particular keyword which have less keyword density not even reached minimum limit. So, this shows that you should give equal importance to all the SEO factors like link building, article writing, etc.

How to check the keyword density?
There are online tools available in the internet. You can use those tools to check your web page keyword density. Below are some useful tools to check the web page keyword density.

1.    http://www.ranks.nl
2.    http://www.seoworkers.com
3.    http://www.seocentro.com