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I wrote a piece on a topic that can be described by 3 keywords in a row, let's say 'search engine optimisation'. The piece is readable text--no spam intended. I uploaded the page and ran the keyword density analyzer.
The thing came up with 33% density for one of the terms on its own, 50% for two of these terms and 100% for the three words together.
Now, what I would like to know and can't figure out by myself, nor from the forums here, is if I should rewrite this page so the density becomes lower. In other words: am I (unconsciously) spamming here or not?
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In case you would think it's rude of me not to reply right away: I'm in Belgium and the temperature here is 32 degrees centigrade right now--as I still don't have airco, I'm going to quit before my processor melts down --the one in my head :) that is.
I do look forward to reading your thoughts in this tomorrow morning (my time; by which time you guys have all fallen asleep :).
If you were looking at the body text, there isn't any way a three word phrase could have a densitiy of 100%. (Unless that phrase was the only thing on the page.
Wrong choice.
You need to just analyse the page without the term being specified and find it in the results with the whole page analysed.
(I'm assuming we're talking about the density analyser here at search engine world)
If not, try that one. Or any one other than the one you tried... because if it's not just the case of "user error" as WG and deejay described, the keyword analyzer you're using must be broken! :)
Well, it was the analyzer at Search Engine World, and I did not check or uncheck anything on the analyzer page. I sort of thought this could not be correct, but I must admit that the density analyzer is a bit of a mystery to me. I sometimes get strange results on all pages.
I'll try again and see what happens. Thanks to you all for this clarification and if anything was done wrong by me, I'll come back to you with my experiences!
Nevertheless, this brings me back to my first question, and I'm asking again because perhaps other newbies like myself will be wondering too: would such high density be considered spamming, or is the context surrounding these keywords enough to convince a search engine that I am honest, so to speak?
No, the analyzer found 3 occurences of that phrase on the page, and reported 100%, but something must have gone wrong as I said in my earlier post.
Thanks for helping out at this late hour!
I wish I knew the answer to that one ErikV. Many if not most of my pages sit around 30%, and I get a bit squeamish about that level.
You'll see around 8-12 % being recommended around here as probably optimal (I think those were the figures mentioned). I understand some here have done tests that indicated best results at that level, and evidence of declining SERP placement at increasingly higher levels.
You could do a site search here for 'keyword density' - that would pull up some worthwhile reading.
I read about the 8-12% rule here, but my own experience from before I joined WebmasterWorld, was that these did not get me anywhere. Almost all of my pages are in that league, and none rank high. Only the last couple of weeks am I starting to see an improvement, after I read advise here and tried to implement it as good as I can.
But if you have pages around 30%, how are they doing? Are you being punished by the SEs, or do your pages show up just fine?
