Ideal keyword density

[NotePad]

I used the simspider [searchengineworld.com...] (great tool by the way) and discovered my keyword density for a 2 word phrase (the most popular search in my genre) is 4.15%.

My SERP is #1 for this phrase.

Does anyone know what the ideal density is?

Sorry if this has been discussed before.

[Namaste]

There may not be benefit for increasing keyword density, but is there a penalty for it? Would a page with 60% keyword density be penalised?

[netguy]

<But to not use the alt tags seems to me to be shooting oneself in the foot.>

martinibuster, I have to Clearly agree with wackmaster on this one.

I was checking some keywords for a particular site, and noticed my primary site on page 1, then a highlighted listing which drew my attention on page 2 of the SERPs.

It was a completely different site of mine, and after looking at the code, I realized I had used a photograph from the other site and had not changed the Alt attribute.

There was No Other reference to the keyword on the page whatsoever, other than a large JPG with the keyword in the Alt attribute - so that's proof enough for me that it is at least 'part' of the algo.

Steve

[wackmaster]

> ...that is a gross overstatement of the importance of alt tags. In fact, if there is any weight given, it is of such insignificance I rarely pay attention to it anymore.

Acutally, I did not mean to imply that alt tags are overly important (and agree that they are not given much weight)...BUT we have some evidence that they are still give a minor bit of weight. So if they are easy to implement when building the site, why not?...this is becomming a game of inches already. Do you consider alt tags carrying keywords as spam? What about "widget-dot" as an ALT tag, if widget is an important keyword and dot is a bulltet point gif?

More importantly, what I was reacting to was the prior comment:

> Today i did a lot of analyzes and came to the conclusion that depending on various other factors like crosslinking, internal link and site navigation structure, a high keyword density expecially keywords and phrases repeated in alt texts of image links can boost a site. Even if the alt texted images only link internally.

My response was meant to indicate that in our view, alt tags may help, can't hurt, and don't seem to us to constitute spam...so if Yidaki is going nuts over others using them, just use them too...

What makes us crazy - and we see it all the time in our category - is hidden text, sneaky java redirects, and other major nasty things that unfortunately seem to work, but that we will NOT engage in...for reasons that run the gamut from ethical (it's sleazy!) to practical (we hope Google will catch up to these dopes and nail their butts). We keep hearing and reading that Google is on the case, but we see infractions even by some well known and (we would have hoped) reputable companies.

Obviously from reading around the forums, this is a hot and emotional issue! Here too, as we see dollars slip thru our fingers that go to the cheaters...

[gopi]

Namaste wrote There may not be benefit for increasing keyword density, but is there a penalty for it? Would a page with 60% keyword density be penalised?

As far as i see there is no penality associated with KW density in google ....it simply ignores KWD after certain percentage ...

Personally i have sites with 40 -50% KWD and they are doing fine ...in ultra high competitive industries KWD of 20% is common

[mykel]

Somebody said "20% density? Ridiculous! That's every 5th word!".
Well, not exactly. If I'm not mistaken, the tool for keyword denisty on Searchengineworld only couts a word as a keyword if there are two instances of it on the page. So if the only words you repeated are: "widget" and "fidget", each one twice, then they both have a density of 50%.

[vitaplease]

keyword dead-entity ;)

off-page is the all and everything.

one extra good link with 1% KW-density will beat any ugly unreadable 23,4% KW-density.

[GrinninGordon]

vitaplease

Disagree, it is both.

I have two sites, one for blue square widgets, one for red round widgets. They used to be basically the same sites but for different areas. I used to play a few "tricks" here and there as I added a new page. They both did well, but were never on page 1 (mutually tough key words).

I redid the blue square widgets site, and made it all good html and no tricks (just making sure my keywords and links were as they should be, etc.). Both sites offer careful link exchange and have equals numbers. My red round widgets site had all my previous little experiments (nothing too bad, nothing that would get it penalised).

This update, my blue widgets site became number one. My red thingys site, went down from page 3 to page 9. It is not just about links (although that is big), it is about html design and keyword density.

This has also been born out with other (not the same products / services) sites I have worked hard on too. Google was very "kind" to me this time (thanks in a large part to information I received here). And I can say it is links, html design (mostly to do with internal linking, text, frequency and number of times), AND keyword density (and where those keywords go and how) for sure.