Keyword Density 3% standard, FO' REAL?

[theleathercollection]

Is 3% still the norm for keyword density?

[bhuff85]

3% does work, but I usually stick to around 2% and add in LSI keywords as well. Works great for me overall.

[yonkdigio]

2-4% is norm for keyword density

[paulgl]

How on earth can you get that? Don't you just write an
article for a human being that makes sense?

Seems logical to me, rather than counting words....

People should care less what their density is if they are
actually writing a real article for real people and not
a search engine.

FO' REAL!!!

Paul

[BlakeM]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How on earth can you get that? Don't you just write an
article for a human being that makes sense?

Seems logical to me, rather than counting words....

People should care less what their density is if they are
actually writing a real article for real people and not
a search engine.

FO' REAL!!!

Paul

Not to mention that 3% is ridiculous. That requires using a keyword 24 times in an 800 word article. Especially if it is a long tail keyword. Crazy.

[barbrine]

Around 5% is fine.

[BlakeM]

Originally Posted by barbrine

Around 5% is fine.

5%??? You might as well just copy and paste you keyword 10 times. That is way over doing it.

And your signature says "say no to articles written for SEO purposes"

That's a joke.

[kkchoon]

I use only 1% to 1.5% on my site. You haven't count your image tag, side wide link and header, sub head... if you use anything beyond 3% it would greatly hurt the ranking without you knowing it!

[theleathercollection]

Wow thanks for the great feedback people...I've been using the keyworddensity website to check my density I believe it includes image tag, headers, etc.

[smorse1]

While keyword density tends to be subjective, here is a logical way to go about it:
Analyze the density of the top 10 competitors for the keyword you are looking at.
If the keyword density of those pages are 0.9%, make your page somewhere within this range. If Google has rewarded a 2.4% keyword density for your particular keyword, then make your page 2.4% +/-.
Essentially, normalizing against your competitors for the keyword means that you can't really say that any exact percent of density is correct across the board.

Oh, and write good content, too. It'll make all the difference.

[warrich]

Just don't over do it, make it look natural and keep it about 4%.

[webladder]

Keyword density ? I'd be more concerned with writing, unique content that flows naturally and is for the READER, not for Search Engines.

If you're writing content that is for the reader, your keyword density should work itself out; meaning, if the content is written to be readable, then every other word won't be a keyword. Instead, it will be naturally flowing content that appeals to the reader. Always write your content for the end user, not search engines.

[razorico]

Type into google "keyword density"- first result is wikipedia . Others on the first page refer to density checker tools. Keyword density nowadays is a minor factor in rankings, it's important for software developpers to porvide more functions of their tools an dmake them more attractive, so they're impacting on us that keyword density is very iportant and should be checked.
So as many others said - write naturally, and you can forget about keyword density.

[InTheMaking]

Originally Posted by BlakeM

5%??? You might as well just copy and paste you keyword 10 times. That is way over doing it.

And your signature says "say no to articles written for SEO purposes"

That's a joke.

Well said, haha.

[Natlex]

2-5%... Depends on the article. It's not that important, just make sure it's ideally in the title and in the first paragraph. After that, anywhere else that makes sense is fine.

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How on earth can you get that? Don't you just write an
article for a human being that makes sense?

Seems logical to me, rather than counting words....

People should care less what their density is if they are
actually writing a real article for real people and not
a search engine.

FO' REAL!!!

Paul

Paul is 100% correct. Instead of worrying about keyword density, you should be more worried about the readability of your articles.

If you write your article for the reader, the "keyword density" should work itself out in the end.

-- Jeff

[timpears]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How on earth can you get that? Don't you just write an
article for a human being that makes sense?

Seems logical to me, rather than counting words....

People should care less what their density is if they are
actually writing a real article for real people and not
a search engine.

FO' REAL!!!

Paul

Paul,

Unless you get the search engine to read and rank it for your term, you will not get the opportunity for the human to read it, unless you are using some PPC or something. So that is why the high rate for your key word in an article, so Google knows what you are going after.

As far as I understand it, 2% to 4% works best to get Google's attention. Then you can get the human's attention after they click on your link in the SERP.

[BlakeM]

Originally Posted by timpears

Paul,

Unless you get the search engine to read and rank it for your term, you will not get the opportunity for the human to read it, unless you are using some PPC or something. So that is why the high rate for your key word in an article, so Google knows what you are going after.

As far as I understand it, 2% to 4% works best to get Google's attention. Then you can get the human's attention after they click on your link in the SERP.

The most important part is the <h1> and <h2> tags. Then just bold and underline your keyword two or three times. But using a keyword 24 times in an 800 word article (3%) is just ridiculous and obvious to Google that you are trying to manipulate them.

If its an 800 word article, using the keyword 10 is PLENTY as far as I'm considered. As long as the article looks natural and you get good backlinks with good anchor text, ranking should not be a problem.

That's just my opinion, though. Do what you want

[omurphy22]

"The most important part is the <h1> and <h2> tags. Then just bold and underline your keyword two or three times. But using a keyword 24 times in an 800 word article (3%) is just ridiculous and obvious to Google that you are trying to manipulate them."

Best piece of advice on this thread. Just make sure the keyword is in the h1, h2 and title tags, then only like 2-3 times in the actual article. Then make sure the content is actually worth reading/linking to. I think this is more important than focusing on arbitrary keyword density percentages.

[Spyder77]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How on earth can you get that? Don't you just write an
article for a human being that makes sense?

Seems logical to me, rather than counting words....

People should care less what their density is if they are
actually writing a real article for real people and not
a search engine.

FO' REAL!!!

Paul

The keyword itself is a factor - some of them are natural enough that no effort is required to make them "look" natural. Others are tougher. Either way it should look like its written for human beings and not bots - bots aren't going to buy your products, at least not in our lifetime anyway.

It may not be easy to do, but if you can pull it off and keep it looking natural, 3% is ideal. Density is easy to check: run the SEO Quake plug-in for Firefox, load the page, click on "density" and you'll see all of the word density info you'd ever care to see in a new tab. It even tags words that are in your title, description, or keyword list.

-Spyder

[Targeted Traffic]

The best keyword density is 1-4%. Which means out of a 400 word article, it appears no more then 6 times. If you go above that, then there is a chance of the article being marked by the search engines as Keyword Stuffing, which will cause it to get penalized.So yeah it matters

[theleathercollection]

I agree that keyword density actually matter especially when you don't have an affiliate type site. I manage a day to day business website and my site isn't stuffed full of articles like affiliate sites, I have to take the more design approach and wow customers with images and less text (but just enough to get ranked). It seems like 3-4% is the best for on page keyword density, I'll stick with it!

[TryBPO]

Here's an interesting and technical reference to, basically, why keyword density is crap:
The Keyword Density of Non-Sense

That being said, we still make sure the primary keyword we're trying to rank for is mentioned 1% of the time throughout the article, mixed in with other natural language. We wrote a post on our content strategy here:
Niche Website Content - Our Process And Providers For Site Content | AdSense Flippers