Keyword density tools

Which one is correct?

[coho75]

I have been trying to optimize my pages by measuring the keyword density. However, using different tools gives me completely different numbers. One says that a certain three word phrase has a density of 5.3%, while the other tool says the density for the phrase is 60%. Why such a drastic difference? Which one is right?

The tools used were:
[searchengineworld.com...]
This tool seems weird to me. When I removed keywords on some pages it actually told me that their density had gone up.

[ranks.nl...]

Any help or clarification would help me a lot. Any other suggestions for accurate tools would also be helpful.

Thanks,
coho75

[brotherhood of LAN]

Count the words yourself, best way to error check.

Also pay attention to what the tool looks for, some spiders seem to match alt text on one line but not if theres also title text, things like that can produce different results.

[coho75]

Thanks for the response. Any recommendations on what words to count? Should I include the meta KW, meta description, and all of the text and links? When I do the calculations for my 3 word phrase, should I count the phrases as individual words or as one? I may be getting too picky here, sorry.

coho75

[brotherhood of LAN]

>>words to count

Well, in regards to these kw analyzers, all of them :) Well, personally I'd read everything that's outside a comment tag.

As far as the importance of tags, I'm sure others can chime in, there's also loads of older posts that discuss the relative importance of tags. I think the general consensus is you shouldn't worry too much about your meta keywords tag.

It's worth checking tools for accuracy, I'm sure you used it to save you counting the words manually, but always worth checking that it's producing accurate info.

[Calum]

Can confirm the two sites you list give wildly different counts for 3 word phrases (the total count of keyword phrases are part of the cause - one being double the other).

Heard from many sources that Google get unhappy if you repeat more than 7% - am guessing that counts for 3 word phrases as it does for 1 word. Anyone wish to inform on this?

Would love to hear what Google do if they detect a breach of the 7% parameter in their almighty algorithm. Do they drop the page for all keyword and key-phrase searches? Or do they just punish on the excessive phrases and keywords?

Thanks
Calum

[WebGuerrilla]

There are far too many factors involved with how a page may or may not rank in Google to draw any kind of firm conclusions regarding keyword density.

You can find thousands examples of pages that rank well in Google that exceed a 7% density. You can also find many past threads on keyword density and Google in the Google forum. If you would like to explore the topic further, that would be the best place to start.