eLearning Series

by Jeff Finkelstein

6. Keyword Density

What is keyword density? It’s a percentage which is calculated this way:

Number of times keyword appears on a page / Total word count on page = Keyword Density.

Keyword density is usually displayed as a percentage. So, if you have a page that has 100 words on it, and you have a keyword appear 5 times on the page, your page would have a keyword density of 5%. (5 / 100 = 5%) In a real life example, the search term “personalized URL” has an overall keyword density on this page of 3.05%:

Click the graphic above to see a live sample of a keyword page. (15 instances of the keywords / 981 total words on the site = 3.05%) However, not all keywords on a page are treated the same. Keywords in the title tags, page name and section headings are often given higher weight than keywords that appear in the regular content area of the page. Here’s how the keywords break down in the different areas of the site: Description: Keywords: Total: Percentage: Title Tag 1 8 25.00% Page Name 1 3 66.00% Linked Text 1 61 3.27% URLs in Links 2 237 1.68% Visible Text 7 627 2.23% Total 15 981 3.05% This keyword term currently has a ranking of #2 in Google:

Click the graphic above to see the rankings. So, how much keyword density is too much? It depends on which study you read, but it’s generally best to keep your keyword density between 3-6%. Anything more, and you’ll be penalized for trying to spam the search engines. As a general rule of thumb, if the copy of the site makes sense to a human reading it, you should be fine. But if you repeat the same keyword five times in a row (Personalized URL, Personalized URL, etc), then you can be banned from search engines or penalized.

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