Calvin Johnson

With the decline of meta-tags, keyword density ranges have
become very important. They've also become very controversial.
Here's the thing: you want a high enough keyword density--at
least 7%--that your keywords rank highly in the bigger search
engines, such as Google, Yahoo, DogPile, and HotBot.



But, you don't want your keyword densities so high that they
turn your content into over-hyped gobbledygook, nor do you want
to raise a red flag when the spiders come crawling over your
content. If your keyword density is 20% or more, the search
engine will most likely red-flag you for "keyword stuffing" and
penalize you by moving you down in the search results.



Thus, keyword density ranges are controversial. To make things
worse, different search engines have different algorithms. One
of them might thing an SEO keyword density of 18% is fine,
another may not.



The only way a search engine can figure out just what your page
is about is to search for the keywords you use. Those keywords
don't necessarily have to be right there on the page--they can
be in the title and in links that will lead to the page. Having
said that, though, keywords that appear on your page are
certainly the most common way that search engines use to decide
what your page is all about. Keyword density refers to the ratio
of keywords to the total number of words on the page.



Now I want you to look again at the paragraph above. There are
95 words total, and I used the word "keywords" exactly five
times. The keyword ratio for the paragraph, then, is 5 divided
by 95 times 100, or about 5.26%. Easy math, correct? You bet.



But how much does that stuff matter?



Well, it's not a matter of life and death, but it's pretty
important. You see, when a search engine compares two pages to
figure out which one ought to rank higher, keyword density will
factor into it--usually pretty significantly. In fact, all other
factors being equal (which is pretty much impossible, but let's
pretend), the page with the higher keyword density will
generally rank higher.



However, simple as Keyword Density is, it can also get really
complex in a hurry. Do plurals or other stemmed variations of
your keyword count as keywords? Should stop words, which are
those common words you see all the time like "a" or "the," be
ignored when calculating density?



Should you include off-page content, like meta tags and titles,
in your calculations? What about keyword frequency or keyword
proximity or keyword prominence? What about the href="http://www.adsensekingdom.com/">Google AdSense ads
themselves? And like I've said before, bear in mind that if your
keyword density gets too high, search engines just might realize
it and penalize your page.



Keyword densities really are not rocket science, so don't fall
into the trap of making things more complicated than they need
to be. Go to Google and search on "keyword density." The first
three pages should be ones that provide about 20 or 25 different
tools for calculating KWD.



Now all you have to do is pick one that feels user-friendly to
you and use it to optimize your web page, noting the results.
Now try something else: run a Google search on your keyword, and
run the analysis on the first ten sites. Take a good hard look
at the results. From this, you should get a good idea how your
page will compare with the ten top ranking pages in Google, at
least in terms of keyword density.



Here's the thing that frustrates people, though: if you go and
do that with three or four different KWD tools, you will no
doubt come up with different numbers, but the graph of those
numbers will look very similar. Don't worry about it, because
the numbers aren't the most important thing. You only care how
they compare to each other.



Something else you'll probably discover is that keyword density
is not a very good indicator of rank. The top ranking page may
have a much lower density than the page at number ten, for
example.



Why does this happen, when you work so hard to get your keyword
density high? It happens because KWD is only one factor among
many. It's important to a good ranking, but it's not the be-all
and end-all of a good ranking. What you really want to know from
your analysis is the range of density values that rank well.
Chances are good that if your page is below that range, getting
on page one to compete with the big dogs will be tough, and if
you're above that range, the search engines may think you're
"keyword stuffing" and you'll be penalized. Just remember,
though, the numbers are guidelines you should know, not
carved-in-stone rules that forever define your fate. Experiment!



You may hear other self-proclaimed website gurus (besides
myself) say that keyword density should always run between two
and eight percent or whatever the current numbers being quoted
in forums across the Internet happen to be. That's partly true.
Those numbers are probably fairly accurate for most keywords.
They're based on averages and it's always good to stick close to
an average.



But there's a problem. Here's how the problem goes: the most
commonly used letter in English is the letter "E." If you wrote
a ten word sentence, it would be much easier to use the letter E
five times in that sentence than it would be to use, say, the
letter Z five times. Letters aren't an even distribution.
Neither are keywords. Big shock, huh?



Remember what I said earlier about not sounding awkward in your
content? Well, the biggest thing about keyword density is that
it must read well and sound very natural to a user. It's useless
to get a page one ranking if your content is very lame. Like the
letter E, some keywords are easy to use a lot of while still
sounding natural. For instance, if your keyword was "grass" on a
site about lawn care, it wouldn't be hard to use "grass" a lot.



But some keywords just don't lend themselves to being used a
lot...like "quince" (it's a type of fruit). Here's the choice to
be made: you can use an average range, which will work well most
times, or you can spend time analyzing the top ten pages to find
the best range for that particular keyword and be sure you're
not trying to optimize for a Z or a quince.



Frustrated? Don't be! It isn't that hard. If you're still
confused, check out a competitor's page in Google's cache (which
highlights the keywords for you) to get a good visual feel for
density.



Another good tip is to perform a "real person sanity check" on
your content. Reading your optimized content out loud several
times, and try to get a natural flow that will make the copy
draw users who will come back. Then take a hard look at your
content. If you can substitute a keyword for a pronoun without
loosing your flow, do it.



For instance, if your keyword is "hammock", instead of a
sentence saying, "I love to lie in it," say, "I love to lie in
my hammock."



I hope you find this information helpful as you create your
optimized AdSense cash cows!



About the author:


Calvin is a self-proclaimed "Google Adsense guru", who rakes in
loads of cash from AdSense optimized websites. For more
information about how he does it, check out his free guide at href="http://www.adsensekingdom.com/">www.adsensekingdom.com





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