Key word Density

a happy medium

[humpingdan]

How important is the keyword desnity to the page results?
our competitors site is top of google under many of the search terms we want to appear with, our keyword desnity is far greater then theres, we also hav a smaller (kb) site but just as graphically pleasuing, and they use heavy scripting throught out the site where as we have stuck to standard HTML! are we following the correct guidelines or are we way off?

[jon80]

Keyword density is important but is only one of a great number of factors which determine a site's position in the SERPs, such as number and quality of incoming links, anchor text, text in h1 tags etc.

[heini]

>keyword density is important

Jon80, I'd go even further and say density is a pretty small factor in itself, which easily gets outweighed by the big things, like anchortext, PR, titles, headers.

[jon80]

Keyword density may not in itself be the biggest single factor, but I have seen it make a positive difference to the ranking of a page in the SERPs when other factors, to the best of my knowledge, remain unchanged. OK, its hard to judge when there are so many variables involved in Google's algorithm. The phrases I compete for are not that competetive either.

[FourDegreez]

On the topic of keyword density...

I would imagine that the Google people hand-picked a number of sample "ideal" pages and ran the keyword counter on them to determine the "sweet spot" for keyword density. If your page's density was too much higher or lower than this sweet spot, it would get little or no advantage. If Google did things this way, I have to imagine that keyword density would be a non-trivial method of determining a page's rank. Pure speculation on my part, though.

[jon80]

For the sake of argument, if the "ideal" keyword density is 15%, and you had to write several paragraphs, this would read really badly due to the repetition. As many have pointed out before, the title style of "Keyword - get your discount keyword here" reads ok, and allows you to get the keyword near the top of the page.
Then there is selective use of the keyword in bold, italic etc. throughout the document.
For the body text, the only way I would alter my natural writing style is to avoid the natural use of synonyms, as an algorithm will not detect that you are trying to adopt a fancy writing style, ie using terms like ball, sphere, ovoid, globe on the same page.
Its a bit counter-intuitive with regard to writing copy but in search engine terms, it's better to pick one keyword term or phrase per page and stick with it.

[trillianjedi]

I have noticed keywords make a huge difference in the SERPS - from #42 to #7 in fact, with spammy technique too - red text against a red .gif rendering it unreadable to the human eye and filled with five or six lines like this:-

"keyword 1 keyword 2 keyword 3 keyword 1 keyword 2 keyword 3 keyword 1 keyword 2 keyword 3 keyword 1 keyword 2 keyword 3 keyword 1 keyword 2 keyword 3 keyword 1 keyword 2 keyword 3 keyword 1 keyword 2 keyword 3"

I'm hoping they finally got around this problem and google can now perform some sort of filter on either blocks of keyword text out of context on a page, or can check the colour of a background graphic image.

If you remember, this was discussed at length back in April before even the deepcrawl started and anyone knew of what was to become of Dominic.

I wonder if they listened?

TJ

[Delhibaba]

In Keywords never repeat a keywords more than three time according to Google it's a Spam, include keywords in your site page content to get a better ranking your index page must have atleast 250 chracter (min)in content, include phrase in keywords.

Wrong method

destination in india, destination nepal, destination in sri lanka, destination in singapore

Correct Method

destination india, nepal, sri lanka, singapore

[trillianjedi]

Delhibaba:-

I think you're getting confused with keyword meta data?

TJ

[jon80]

TJ
I think GG has flagged it up often enough that this type of stuff will be attended to by new filters.
To be safe, I would stick to a natural, not overly repetitive writing style.

[trillianjedi]

I'm not sure they have the technology to do it though - they would have to check the background colour of a gif in a particlar place where text lies.

On a complex gif that would be very very difficult.

I agree on writing style though - repetitive use like this should qualify for a penalty.

We'll see what they come up with.

TJ

[mil2k]

Jon80, I'd go even further and say density is a pretty small factor in itself, which easily gets outweighed by the big things, like anchortext, PR, titles, headers.

Would agree to that purely on my personal experience.

[killroy]

I'll repeat a question here I've had for a while which has never been answered.

I have a listing of links to sub pages like this:
Restaurants
Hotels
Accomodation
Travel
...

My problem is I rank high on all these and get tons of useless trafic beecause the pages are localised to one country.

but writing
Restaurants in country
Hotels in country
Accomodation in country
Travel in country
...

Is spammy and nonsensical to visitors. But it would give google the idea of what the pages are about (i.e. rank the pages high for "Restaurants Country" and lower for "restaurants")

could I use:
Restaurants <span style:display:none">in country</span>
Hotels <span style:display:none">in country</span>
Accomodation <span style:display:none">in country</span>
Travel <span style:display:none">in country</span>

in this case?

SN

[IITian]

Went to Google site and checked their options directory. A keyword analysis showed that the keyword Google occurred 56 times that is about 38% of the time.

That is about the same percentage I strive for my main keyword in my pages. ;)

[trillianjedi]

I would say just make it read well to humans rather than rely on a percentage.

Algo's will change (and the "correct" percentages may change), but the English language has rules which have survived hundreds of years and more.

The ultimate goal of an algo for keyword density will be to scan text in the same way that a human reads it.

Build for humans and let the robots catch up.

And make sure it's in the title, headings and URL.

TJ

[IITian]

Algo's will change (and the "correct" percentages may change), but the English language has rules which have survived hundreds of years and more.

True, and probably algos will catch up in a few years but but I want to design for today and Google's website is my guiding light for (high) keyword density. ;)

[jon80]

TJ
I agree.
SEO is, up to a point, about trying to second guess the algo, but when it changes monthly, or perhaps now, even more often, a lot of webmasters could be caught out.
There are basic improvements which can be made to the average site without sailing anywhere near close to the wind with regard to dubious practice.
Why take the risk?

[Roland7]

Desining today may get you forgotten tomorrow. It is a lot like designing your site for only Google's bots. But, I understand your point.. You want sales Now and Google is the market leader~

My take is this:
1. Design your site for the User
2. Design according to rules set out by W3.org and RFC 952.

Then,you will be fine today AND tomorrow.

Best,

Roland

[IITian]

If one could design a page only once and couldn't recode it again then it makes sense to have the text as a normal English writing.

However, we have the ability to change our pages and we should be optimizing for current SEs. My opinion is that first write it from the visitor's point of view (that is in normal plain English) and then add a few keywords here and there, especially in the title, and headings to make it better for the search.

[martinibuster]

Keyword density isn't an issue. As google advises on their web site, just make sure you have the keywords in there.

I don't do kw density anymore. Just because a highly ranked page has density doesn't mean it's there because of the density- Examine those pages closer, there are other factors pushing those pages up.

I concentrate on the other factors and do very well.

[trillianjedi]

IItian, density is not important. As long as the keywords are in the natural English text that's enough.

Page titles, headings, anchortext etc are all more important variables in the algo's and you only have to do it once.

Rather than re-writing your sites pages once a month, you would do much better to spend that time adding new pages every month.

TJ