Keyword Density, is really a very talked about factor, even today among many SEOs and bloggers. People still consider that Keyword Density is a very important on-page SEO factor, and they should really go high with the KD percentages, to have better rankings. But is it really true? Does the search engines like Google and Bing, take Keyword Density into account while estimating the relevancy of a certain webpage in respect to a certain keyword. Or is it just a myth in SEO?

Well, we will discuss about Keyword Density with great detail in this article, and at the end you yourself will probably be able to answer the question yourself, Is Keyword Density a real myth in SEO?

Few Technical Terms Explained

Before we move on to determine whether Keyword Density is really an SEO myth or not? We need to understand few technical terms. Nothing to worry, there terms may seem to be something very difficult to understand, but they are actually not. I will explain and try to make things as easy as possible.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is the percentage of the number of times a certain keyword or keyword phrase appears in the total number of indexable words in the entire page. If a certain page has 100 words (except the Headlines, Titles, etc, and a certain keyword appears for 5 times, then the Keyword Density of that term in that page is 5%.

Keyword Frequency

Keyword Frequency is the no of times a keyword appears in the certain page. It is just a pure number. Suppose, the word “is” is used in your article for 50 times then the Keyword Frequency of “is” is 50. The keyword you are targeting to rank for should not be too high or too low. It depends primarily on the length of the article.

Keyword Prominence

Keyword Prominence indicates how prominent a certain keyword is, in your article. It depends on the placement of a certain keyword. Suppose you place the keyword in the TITLE of the post, on the HEADLINES, make it bold or italics at some places, etc. This will help the search engines understand the this particular keyword is more prominent than the others, and this is the keyword that you are trying to target in your page.

Keyword Proximity

Keyword Proximity is the distance between two similar keywords. It also matters a lot. Too less proximity can lead to Google penalty. You should understand where you need to place the keywords. Suppose you place it once at the first paragraph, and once at the last paragraph of the posts. And 2-3 times anywhere else in the body of the posts. But this also depends on the length of the posts.   Why bother about keyword density?

Why Bother About Keyword Density?

Keyword density was used by search engines to estimate the relevancy of a certain page with respect to a certain topic. Suppose you are writing an article on “best iPhone apps” then you must have the keyword “best iPhone apps” in your article, and this is quite obvious.  In early days of the internet, the search engines just counted the number of times a certain term is present in a webpage. And on that basis, they ranked webpage’s. This simply means, that maximum number of times you have a certain keyword in a page the maximum is your chances to rank for that keyword term.

But fortunately those days are long gone. Now, the search engines are smart enough to understand the relevancy of a certain page by many other effective ways. They just don’t’ need keyword density anymore. So, you don’t need to bother about it too much while writing articles. Even it has been seen many times that a certain page in spite of not having the keyword even once in the page, got ranked for it. How is it actually possible? The page didn’t have the keyword even once, but still how did it got ranked so well.

The reason is simple. The search engines are smart enough now-a-days. They use LSI keywords to understand the relevancy of a page. LSI keywords are the similar meaning or related keywords of the main keyword. An another important factor is the off-page keyword density. Now ask me what’s that? If a page has backilnks where the anchor text of the back links contains the keyword, then this is known as off-page keyword density.

So, personally I feel that keyword density is just a myth is SEO, and is no more relevant. We should not bother too much about it. It will do not good to us, but can mess your entire SEO efforts if something goes wrong, and can even penalize you. But, there are few do’s and dont’s that we must follow, so that we can improve our on-page SEO optimization without bothering too much about KD.

Some people talk about KD of 3-6% or even 8%. I really don’t get the logic of how they are saying this non-sense stuff. Its completely illogical. I will give you a practical example. Suppose, you are going to write an article on “speed up wordpress” of total 3000 words and is willing to maintain a keyword density of suppose 6%, then you need to place the keyword “speed up wordpress” 180 times. OMG! Can you imagine, repeating a single piece of keyword for 180 times in a piece of text. Won’t the readers think that you have gone nuts? Won’t your article look like it has been written by some robot and not you? Or will it at all be a quality piece of writing?

Do’s And Don’ts Of Keyword Placement

As I mentioned, Keyword Density is not the metric you should put to much attention or time. But there are certain do’s and don’ts that you must follow to ensure that you can extract the maximum benefit from this metrix, without even spending too much time calculating the density.

1) DO place the keyword at the TITLE of the posts. Otherwise it will be very difficult for you to rank well.

2) DO try to place the keyword at the beginning of the TITLE of the posts. It helps often in getting better rankings.

3) DO use the Keyword in the body of the article at least once. It the length of the article is around 500-600 words, use the keyword for 3-4 times, or else for lengthy article you can use the keyword for 708 times.

4) DON’T omit the keyword from the body of the article. Use the keyword at least once.

5) DO try to keep the keyword in the URL of the posts. It makes things more relevant.

6) DO try to keep the keywords in the ALT text and filenames of the images used. it will help you to rank in the image search also.

7) DO try to get backlinks with the keyword in the anchor text. This is very important, can can hlep you rank very well, with even 0% Keyword Density in your post.

8) DON’T use black hat techniques like Keyword Cloaking and Keyword Stuffing.

9) DO write for the users and not for the search engines. You don’t push the keywords anywhere and everywhere. Use them when it is really needed, otherwise don’t.

10) DO use LSI keywords to make your article more relevant. Try to find the synonyms or the related keywords of the main keyword, and make proper use of them.

After reading this article, what do you personally think? Is keyword density really an SEO myth or if it has got some importance in search engine rankings?