Does A High Keyword Density Affect Your Rankings In Google!

[cpacashman]

I noticed some bloggers talking about Google penalizing people for over optimizing there
keywords & would like to know if some others have experienced the same with Google.

One guy optimized his wordpress blog 100% and used a 2.5% keyword density
using the seo plugin "Easy WP Seo"

He also had Adwords running & Google gave him a quality score of 5 on a post that has
26 on page seo factors for the keyword, has anyone experienced the same with Google.

[blitz20]

If you have too high keyword density you will get penalized

[JohnMcCabe]

Google has been very vocal about penalizing people who try to game their system. Over-optimizing is one of the flags that could bring closer scrutiny.

[Mark McCullough]

Yes, it does. Honestly, any SEO tactic that clearly is an attempt to game the rankings risks being penalized. It doesn't necessarily mean it will, doesn't mean it won't. If its over-the-top (aka very high keyword density), it likely will. But there are many things their algorithm glads.

[Alexa Smith]

I agree entirely with John's comment above.

"Ezine Articles" are good judges of this. Understandably enough, they decide everything according to what their paymaster (Google) wants, so we can perhaps all learn something from them.

On their site, if you submit anything with keyword density that touches 2% or above, it rightly gets you an automated rejection by the software, without even getting as far as a human editor.

But that's a "maximum", not something to aim for.

People who write for readers, rather than for search engines, tend to do much better, in article marketing, anyway.

I don't count keywords, myself, but I suspect that my keyword density runs at about 1%.

[Ben Armstrong]

The way that google improve their algorithm is by having real people look at various websites and mark the ones that are poor quality, spammy or otherwise useless to end users. They then analyze the sites to find what they have in common with each other and what makes them different from the higher quality websites. (I tried to find a link to the article I read this in but had no luck).

I wouldn't be surprised if they were penalizing keyword stuffing sites.

I believe on page optimization will always be important, just don't overdo it or sacrifice user experience for the sake of it.

[TerryL]

I've found that a keyword density of between 1.5% and 2% works best on my sites. They get indexed quickly and move up in the rankings quickly, too. And the rankings tend to stick. If I go below or above that density, I don't get nearly as good results. I also find that longer posts work better, too. Google seems to like to see a lot of content on the front page of any site, so I aim for 1,000 words or more on at least my front page and a minimum of 500 words (but the more the better) on my interior pages.

[timb98133]

Yes that is possible. It’s called “Keyword Stuffing”, but honestly I never worry about it. The most important thing is to write naturally. By writing for people instead of search engines you should rank well!

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Ben Armstrong

The way that google improve their algorithm is by having real people look at various websites and mark the ones that are poor quality, spammy or otherwise useless to end users. They then analyze the sites to find what they have in common with each other and what makes them different from the higher quality websites. (I tried to find a link to the article I read this in but had no luck).

I wouldn't be surprised if they were penalizing keyword stuffing sites.

I believe on page optimization will always be important, just don't overdo it or sacrifice user experience for the sake of it.

It would be a big coincidence if we read the same article, but I've read the same.

Not only that, the thresholds can change depending on the individual search query. Those "various websites" are evaluated against relevant pages judged to be 'high quality', not against some arbitrary set of standards.

So, for example, keyword density of 1.5% might be perfectly on target for some queries, low for others and over-optimized for others.

This suggests that your on-page optimization goals should be to match or only slightly exceed that of the pages holding the top spots for a given search...

[Mate]

Of course it affects your SEO. But there are other factors also