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If I am targetting multiple keywords, does this mean that 17.35% of my article is devoted to ALL those keywords (meaning each kw might only be 5% of the article) or that each keyword I target should be 17.35% or the article.
(I dont know if 17.35% is the golden number, but thats not the point of the question)
If it is the second option, dont the articles sound like crap because 1 in 5 words is the same word.
First, keyword density refers to the density of a single word or phrase.
In terms of how keyword density is worked out, it varies. I suggest using Brett's analyser ( [searchengineworld.com...] ) just for the sake of consistency.
If you run that on a page, you'll see first off that it ignores words of less than 3 letters by default, so that takes care of 'of, a, and, the' and the like.
Then, it looks for repeated words and phrases on the page and bases the percentage on those.
Example: I just ran a page of 250 words through the analyser
It found 26 repeated single words, occuring a total of 131 times throughout the document.
One of those words had 12 occurences, giving a density of 9.6% - ie, 12/131.
Same analysis runs for 2 and 3 word phrases.
So the percentage is not a percentage of total words on the page, but a percentage of prominent words.
:) It's not difficult at all to keep the page sounding sensible on that basis.
I have a car site that is dedicated to 2 brands - and I wonder the same thing. I try to service several car models for each brand - and its hard to get good KW density for all of them on one page. Being that im a forum it becomes almost impossible on other pages.
So I think he's asking (as am I) that if you have lets say 6 main keywords, obviously you cant get 20% density per KW for all of them......... so what KW% should be the goal or can the total density of all those KW combined be about 20%?
On the two car brands I would make two seperate directories with each having it's own index.* page. In other words make a seperate page for each money term in your genre.
IMHO,
Brian
I would create sub pages. Look at it as tiers or levels. The top level is the most general. The bottom level being the most specific.
.... In other words make a seperate page for each money term in your genre.
Reflect nailed it. Divide and conquer.
I don't think the separate directories are necessary, although they may help depending on your optimisation strategy.
One of the trade-offs with forum based sites is you get quantity over quality (strictly from an optimisation perspective - not a comment on the quality of information/content).
But there's no reason why a forum site has to be solely based on threads. Look at the top of this page - see that Library link? No reason why that couldn't be a library of your own well-optimised articles.
As to how many phrases per page, I have one primary phrase per page, with 2-3 secondary phrases, eg:
Primary phrase: Blue widgets
Secondary phrases: large blue widgets, large widgets.
In terms of ideal density... I've been flat out building software for the last six months and haven't been following the engines closely enough to comment, but bear in mind that that ideal density is going to vary for each engine. Another opportunity to divide and conquer.
Example: Say you have one page targetted as above, with densities on the primary phrase at 9% and on the secondary phrases at 4%.
The idea would be to build another page, change one of your secondary phrases to the primary phrase at 9%, and have your original primary become a secondary at 4%.
Gives you a decent shot at nailing rankings for a phrase on more than one engine.
Note: I am NOT advocating duplicate content in any way. But if this is a big enough topic to build a forum around, then it's a big enough topic to write more than one article on... or split a single article into several pages if its big enough.
...or can the total density of all those KW combined be about 20%?
Well, no (assuming that 20% is what you have identified as ideal density).
Keyword density refers to a single keyword or phrase.
