Thread: Keyword Density - Check it... Don't Stress it

Hi People,

I see a lot of people on many forums still obsessing over Keyword Density,

No offense... but, keyword density is basically a 1990s' factor. Everyone is always looking for a perfect setup and there isn't one with every site being different. Drop your keywords in the Title, URL and a few times on the page (and images when appropriate).

Focus on optimizing your Entire Domain.

About 7 years ago I stopped measuring single page keyword density and now focus on Keyword density across an entire domain. Focus on keywords in your Titles and link anchors. Google looks at the theme of the entire domain based on keywords in those areas (Page Title, URL, and page text).

I believe we have all seen pages with obscenely high keyword density rank in the top 3 just as often as pages with a non-optimal keyword density.

Google is more concerned with how much people like your page/domain. If a user reaches your domain for a search term such as "girls toys" and spends a lot of time there... the page will rank well no matter what the keyword density (within reason of course).

if a user reaches a page with whatever you consider to be perfect keyword density... and instantly bounces to the next result. It won't matter that the keyword density is perfect - the user did not agree and that is what google judges.


Lets say you have a domain that has 100 pages and 80% of the page titles have the keywords "womens' health". Then you toss in a page with with perfect keyword density on "girls toys". Although the 2 may be similar from a shopping prospective... ultimately the domain is 80% about "womens' health" and 1 maybe 2% about "Girls Toys".

Your chances of rising to the top of the term "Girls Toys". is low because the domain is primarily about "womens' health".


Bottom line: don't obsess about small factors like keyword density. Look at your site as a whole and optimize that.