Keyword Density

How important is it that you regularly use key words and phrases in your text? Well, it's only as important as it needs to be and shouldn't be any more than that.

Keyword density is the measurement of how often your keywords are used throughout a web page. Search engines may revert to an often used word or phrase as an indicator as to what is described in a page or a body of text, a sort of document outline. In theory, the more you use that keyword. the higher chance there is of it being picked up and indexed by search engines. In theory.

The general idea of optimising your keywords is to get noticed by major search engines, and increase your rankings on the search engine results page (SERP). But increasing legitimate density of your keywords can be tricky.

There are many black hat methods of sneakly increasing the density using CSS or noframe tags to hide content away from the screen. Unfortunately, major players know every trick in the book, and these methods are looked down upon, and are often treated as spam and then ignored, potentially penalising the web page, having the opposite desired effect.

Major players such as Google regularly amend or update their algorithms to identify and filter the spam from the quality content.

Therefore the only legitimate way to increase your keyword density and reep the rewards, is to write honest quality content. But don't go mad.

What are my keywords?

Your keywords are everything that describe your website or web page, that might be put into a string and submitted into a search engine. They are the same as what you might use in a meta keyword tag.

For example, if you ran a website about photography, then the word 'Photography' is a key word. Compile several variations of that keyword, such as 'Contemporary Photography' or 'Landscape Photography' and you develop key phrases.

Where should I place them?

Starting from the top, the first element to think about is the title tag. This is probably the single most important element to place keywords (only second to your domain name. You have about 150 characters to use in your titles, so keep them informative and well structured.

Next, use your meta keywords and description tags. Although rumoured to be useless, the meta keyword tag is still in use throughout the internet, so be on the safe side and cram as many keywords and key phrases into this element. Some people believe there is a limit of 25 words, and then Google will ingore the rest, but I see no evidence of that, so cram away.

The description tag is an important one. This will sit below the page title in the SERPs. Aim between 150 and 160 charcters. Keep the sentence legitimate. It can be tricky trying to put together a short sentence about your website whilst stuffing keywords and phrases in there also.

Place header tags in your web page to indicate a document outline. This determines what you page is about. The lower the H tag, the greater the importance in the eyes of Google, but have a limit on how many H tags to use, for example, never use the H1 tag twice on the same page. Think of them as chapters in a book. H1 is the title on the front page, H2 are the chapters, and H3 are subheadings within chapters.

Take advantage of link title an image alt tags, but vary them. Be wary of spamming your keywords here.

Ensure you surround links with relevant and informative text. For example, never use Click Here, it describes nothing about the link. Instead be more suggestive, such as Read about Lanscape Photography.

The golden rule is to keep it real. Write honest content in your pages, and optimise your keyword density.