keyword density - what this actually is?

what does the experience tells: 5%, 8%...?

[Nika]

Or maybe somebody could advise a descent software that counts this thing correctly? Checking my pages with different programs having totally different values on the outlet. Some say 15% where others detect 7%. What this supposed to mean? Shall be the link names counted? If yes then I don't understand why all these sofware don't see keywords there - they just don't count those saying "count 4" whereas I see on screen all 10. And whole bunch of stuff like this...

I would really appreciate any recomendation based solely on experience rather then some sort of url to a sites where people completely contradict to each other and to themselves too pretty often. Somebody should really know what does 5% density actually mean if we take 5% to be optimum (that's the value which seems reliable to me).

I understand that different search engines might interpret the thing differently. However I'm focused on google for now.

Thanks,
Nick

[tedster]

IMO the concept "keyword density" is not a rigorous, well defined thing at all.

How do you count stop words in the total?
What words go on the stop words list?
If you're optimizing for a phrase, what's the roll of proximity?
Percentage of what - character count ratios?
Should every occurrnce be counted equally - alt attributes? meta tags?

The harder you look, the more elusive the concept gets. Plus, there's no guarantee that any search engine is using any particular measure - or even directly measuring density at all.

The best use I can see is running the SAME software, same settings, over succesful pages - and then emulating the numbers you see there. That was the kind of reverse engineering that brought the keyword density idea into the limelight back in the 90's.

However, algos today have become so complex that focusing on this factor too intensely will not likely bring success. I've seen #1 pages with over 20% keyowrd density, and with 0% keyword density.

[phantombookman]

I believe Google has different parameters for this, new and old sites and especially looking for change.

An old established site seems to be given a pass on high KWD but a new one would probably not get away with it.
The real kiss of death is lifting your KWD to something like those ranking above you!

Just my opinion/experience

[Nika]

That's right, I have also seen top ranked sites either with 20% or 0%. I would be happy, Ted, to simulate any of my successful pages, but am afraid I don't have those. As to trying someone else's keyword compositions then often seems to work exactly as "plantombookman" says...
For a moment I thought the best thing would be not to try fooling the search engine in any manner and thin will be the key to success. However that doesn't seem to work even with Google. Otherwise what are all this so-called Gateway pages pre-designed purposly to please spiders if not fooling? And very often they work.
Same software same settings over succesful pages - well that still seems to be the best advise, though I hate doing things without undestanding.
I think I have a remedy: "you try hard to optimize your pages for Google and Yahoo will embrace them, though Google will never..." Wonder if that would work in opposite way.

[walkman]

what stardard do you use? I seem to get different % for the same page, using different tools. With Brett's tool I get much higher % (2-3 times higher) than the one on ranks.tld

[Nika]

<No tools per TOS>

[edited by: rogerd at 12:50 pm (utc) on Mar. 11, 2005]

[RowdyRaccoon]

Hi everyone, nice to meet you. Long time listener, first time caller...errr poster. I've found so many useful answers here over the years and just wanted to first off say thank you.

The keyword topic is frustrating to say the least. It's true that keywordcount.com is a pretty neat tool in that it shows 2 different url's but I was confounded and quite irritated this week when it refused to show the main critical keyword for a site I'm making for a friend, as well as not showing the same word for a competitor's site. The word is "DJ" as in disc jockey. Apparently that particular counter, although pretty diverse, won't show a word that short. And we HAD to know.

I finally stumbled onto another good one tonight that defaults to show words at least 4 charaters long BUT you can change it to as little as two. This time it found them all. It only works with one url at a time though. You can find it at <snip>

As far as what some older sites get away with, you guys read my mind. And the link farms as well. Somehow they slip thru no doubt. Now if we could only get a solid answer from someone here that works at google about an acceptable keyword ratio. We don't want to know all the secrets. We're all just trying to do this in an ethical way, otherwise we wouldn't even be having this discussion. We just want to know the rules to play fairly by.

I've tried to have informative pages rich with useful content and that doesn't seem to matter when it comes to rankings. Trying to write in a human way gets you no where apparently. I bet if you ran a chapter out of a classic novel thru a keyword checker, it would look like it had nothing to do with the subject matter. When are these engines going to catch up with they way people really write and communicate?

[edited by: engine at 5:33 pm (utc) on Mar. 7, 2005]
[edit reason] No Tools See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]