how to calculate keyword density and backlink question

Freddy,

Question 1: The whole phrase is your keyword, so it would only be 4/450

Your keywords should flow naturally in your content, and not appear to be forcefully added... this is what the spiders really look for.

Question 2: Backlink all your content... You are creating your own semantic web... It is a very powerful strategy.

Hey Freddy,

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on your article compared to the total number of words on the article.

Here, if your keyword appear 4 times in a 450 word article, keyword density would be 4/450 = 0.888%

Now, about backlinks... You should try and build backlinks to those pages which you would want to appear in the google's first page. Obviously, you should be able to generate money out of these pages.

It could be your website, a Squidoo Lens or an article published in Goarticles.com.



Hope this helps
Tom

The keyword is the single word OR full phrase you're targeting. We just use the catch-all term "keyword" to denote both.

For example, if you're targeting "make huge money online" then that is one keyword. Calculate density by how many times that full phrase appears in your copy with each word appearing in that exact order.

What can make things a bit more tricky is how many other times you use the individual words within that phrase in your copy. If the word "money" is used several other times, for example, that might have some bearing on how it's taken into account by the search engines in the overall scheme of things.

Which leads to another aspect of on-page SEO (what you're really talking about here)...

It's a wise idea to employ basic LSI, which stands for Latent Semantic Indexing in your copy. In practice, all you need to know about this factor is that it means you need to use related words and root words in your copy in a natural way. So, instead of using the word "money" when it appears by itself (not in the phrase you're targeting), you should use words like "monies," "income," "cash," etc.

Employing LSI helps the search engines (well, Google at least) better pinpoint the theme(s) being discussed in your content. The reasoning here is that the better you're able to convey accurately what a page of content is about, the better your rankings will be when people search for information closely related to that content. It's not the most important factor... I personally believe very strongly that backlinks still rule for that.... but on-page factors do make a significant difference.

Bottom line: use your keyword phrase naturally and don't stress over hitting a particular density level. But do spend some time building a list of related words for each individual word in your phrase and try to weave them into your content naturally. It takes practice, but I can tell you from lots of direct experience that it does make a difference.

John

Nice clear answers to the question. Personally I don't try to calculate percentages, I just aim to mention the keyword phrase once per hundred words and add in some variations on a theme if it fits. But I agree it must read right or the effectivness is lost.

I find calculating keyword density is useful. A safe range is around 5% give or take a few percentage points. You can also use simple software to do this calculation for you.