What’s Your Keyword Density?
Q: So now that I have my keywords, how often can I use them on a page without it counting against me in the search engines?
A: Well, that’s a great question. And the answer is more of an educated guess that anyone knows for sure. With that said, I would NEVER use a keyword more than 2% of the time on a webpage. And here’s an easy way to figure that out.
Take the total number of words on a post (we’ll use 400 in this example) and then multiply that by 2%. (400 x .02 = 8). Eight times is the maximum number of times I would use that keyword on a particular article of 400 words in length.
A number of people ask me about the keyword density on my articles and I tell them that the density rule that I follow is to usually only use the keyword about 1% – 1.5% of the time. That is where I think I’ve had the most success in getting a webpage to rank higher. Usually as long as the rest of the page optimization is set up correctly, 1.5% seems to be the sweet spot for me.
Now that doesn’t mean that I’ve never had a page with more that 2% keyword density rank well, it’s just that it doesn’t happen as easily as it used to. The search engines are starting to get wise to people over optimizing their blog posts and web pages. They are starting to learn when a webpage is optimized so perfectly, that someone is trying to beat out the system.
So if you have everything EXACTLY perfect in an article, the engines will see that and take that into account when deciding where you’re going to rank. The best way to beat this is to be natural when you write. Write everything as if it is written for a 9th grader (so that most people can understand it).
Use your keyword in your post, but also use synonyms. Synonyms are variations of your keyword. Instead of keyword “density”, I may use a term like frequency or quantity.
Now keep in mind that there are a number of other factors that come into play when optimizing a web page, such as placement, images, videos, where you put those keywords and so on. But the density of keywords that you use in your post or page will likely have a big effect on if it is done correctly.