Keyword Density: Your Key to Better Search Engine Ranking
June 8th 2007 00:17
Whether or not you are extremely SEO savvy--or have any particular interest in Search Engine Optimization per se--it would probably behoove you to pay a bit of attention to the frequency with which certain words or phrases (known in SEO lingo as keywords or keyword phrases) appear in your online writing. Why? Because keyword density (or the frequency with which specific topically targeted words and phrases appear in a piece) is one very important factor used by search engines to determine page rank.
If you've written a witty, winning, and wonderful article or blog post, and its keyword infrequency puts it on page 45 of the search results, chances are good that very few people will have either the patience to locate it or the good fortune to actually read it--including those people who are searching for that topic!
Luckily, there are many websites that can not only explain SEO to the technically challenged among us, but also provide us with SEO tools that can greatly simplify our task of making our writing more keyword-friendly.
As a general rule, your main keyword or keyword phrase should (according to those in the know about such things) appear anywhere from 3% to about 8% of the time (give or take a percentage point or so). Anything over 10% is usually considered excessive and can cause your piece to be penalized by the search engines for "keyword stuffing."
One great place to begin your quest for SEO sophistication is to use the Keyword Density Tool at 123 Promotion to see where your piece falls on the keyword density spectrum. This can be done either before or after publishing on the Net and is done by simply copying and pasting your piece into the text box on the screen and inputting the keywords you want to determine the frequency of into the appropriate boxes. The tool then calculates the percentage of the piece that each keyword or keyword phrase represents. You can search for three keywords or keyword phrases at a time with this tool; and if you'd like to search for others afterward, you may simply delete the previous words and replace them with new words for a convenient recalculation.
This is a great way to prep your article or blog post for publication, if you'd like to be sure that it contains enough keywords before posting it online. If it's already appearing online, this is still a great way to check on keyword density so you'll know whether or not to add more instances of your most important keywords to your piece.
For work already published on the internet, however, there are other SEO tools available on various different websites that can make your task even easier and provide more comprehensive keyword and keyword phrase analysis. On these sites, you may simply enter the URL of your piece, and the SEO tool will generate a list of nearly every conceivable word or group of words that might qualify as keywords or keyword phrases, along with the percentage of frequency of each. (Some even allow you to enter the URLs of two sites whose keyword frequency you'd like to compare.)
Bear in mind, though, that the tools that allow you to enter the site's URL will generally calculate keyword density on the entire web page (though some offer options to exclude certain info). So, if, for example, you're calculating keyword frequency on your blog, all info included in your sidebar and elsewhere on the page will generally be included in the results, which might not give you an accurate reading of keyword density within your blog post; whereas with the first-mentioned keyword analysis site listed above, only the text you paste into the box will be analyzed for keyword density, thus enabling you to restrict the analysis to the blog post alone.
Each of the following sites has various highlights in the exact services it offers; therefore, checking them all out will help you determine which one will best meet your specific needs or whether, perhaps, different ones will suit your purposes better for different projects or at different times. These sites also offer a wealth of information on Search Engine Optimization; so don't neglect to do a bit of reading while you're there--particularly if you're somewhat less than SEO savvy.
The following sites are some of the most visible ones on the internet. No doubt there are others; but, I have the feeling that you'll be able to learn most of what you'll need to know and do most--if not all--of the keyword analysis you'll need to do by visiting one or more of these sites:
The Webconfs.com SEO Tool Set
LinkVendor Professional SEO Tools
Mike's Marketing Tools
Keyword Density - The Analyzer
thesitewizard.com
On the Worldwide Web today, keyword density is everything! Checking out--and using--some of these convenient online SEO tools can help put your work, your blog, or your website on the seach engine map!
Happy analyzing!
Jeanne
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Comment by Louie
Climate Forum
Climate Red
randomthoughts
Phil's Wellness Tips
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
I'm really beginning to think it's an excellent idea to resurrect older posts from our blogs' archives via new posts containing links to those earlier ones that many would probably never get to read if we didn't!
Hope this post will be a great help to you!
Thanks for stopping by!
Jeanne
Comment by Louie
Climate Forum
Climate Red
randomthoughts
Phil's Wellness Tips
Let's face it as David said on the weekend, a lot of "popular posts" are very disposable, your posts certainly stand the test of time so can be repeated.
cheers
Louie
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
Overlooking older posts once they've gone into the archival abyss certainly is easy! And it's true that many of them can go on helping readers for a long time to come because the info they contain continues to be relevant.
Thanks for your generous observations!
Take care!
Jeanne