Posted on: September 10, 2019
Search engine optimization is based on the foundational concept of keyword density. Before starting, it is vital to understand the working model of how keyword density works for SEO because keywords directly impact your blog article’s performance for SEO. Your content’s visibility in search engine results is solely dependent on it, and it also enables you to assign a budget for your online marketing campaigns. However, search engines keep changing the ranking algorithms for keyword density. That is why understanding the relative importance of keyword is essential to make a successful SEO strategy for your content.
Keyword density is the number of a decoded word to focus on appearing in a given content on a webpage or within a piece of content. It is the percentage or a ratio of the keyword to your entire word count. This is also known as keyword frequency.
Keyword density is a specific figure that can be calculated according to your need. You can calculate the keyword density by merely dividing the number of a keyword appeared into the content by the total number of words into the content. The resulting number is your determined keyword density. You can also calculate the keyword percentage by multiplying it with 100. An ideal keyword density is proved to range between 3-5% depending upon the nature of the full content.
TF-IDF stands for “term frequency and inverse document frequency”. It is an advanced form to calculate the keyword density. This statistics is used for text mining and the retrieval of data. It is an ideal way to determine the importance of a specific term to the content. TF-IDF may vary from search engine to search engine in different circumstances by quantifying the relevance of a content published on the webpage with the search query of a visitor. Here is where SEO factors play a significant role in ranking.
There are no rules for keyword density when it comes to SEO. As mentioned above, an ideal keyword density is proved to range between 3-5% depending upon the nature of the full content. However, this statement is based upon an expert’s experiences.
There are no guidelines from any search engine that how many keywords should exactly be included in the content. There are no facts and figures for keyword density on any SEO cheat sheet. Some considerations can ensure you the optimization of your content to increase its visibility and improve the traffic to your website.
Keyword stuffing is the conventional practice of cramming a high number of keywords on a webpage. The technique was used around a decade ago when SEO was an emerging discipline. The stuffing of keywords was done in a way that felt unnatural and forced to the reader. This was done by including keywords in the footers of webpages with hundreds of possible variants of a long tail keyword or standard search terms.
This practice is outdated now, and it’s unusual to be considered today. Although, it may seem to be an easy way to rank a page high because search engine algorithms were not smart enough to interpret these stuffed webpages and hence they were ranking high. However, today search engine’s closely guarded secret called “Ranking Signals” make keyword stuffed webpages penalized. Therefore, keyword stuffing is dangerous if you want your site to get visible in organic search results.
As mentioned above, there is no rule for keyword density. Keyword density can change depending upon the nature of the content. However, some unofficial guidelines based upon experiences, risks and experimentation can help you in decision making for your keyword targeting strategy. Most of the SEO experts recommend one keyword in every 200 words; however, you can safely include more keywords without being penalized as per your quality content.
Targeted keywords are the basics of today’s SEO search techniques. Another SEO best practice to consider adopting for your strategy, which uses keyword variants. Keyword variants are variations of your primary keyword that your potential prospect, uses to search for a product, service or content.
For example, a user from London searching for a spa service is expected to type “spas in London”, “spa service in London”, “spa near me in London”, “spa deals London”, “London’s best spa”, and so on. They might search with the different long tail and short tail keywords to get their satisfactory results.
The intent of keywords behind every search query is similar as the user wants to locate and purchase a product or service. However, the variants may be different. Many ways can attract potential lead to get to your business; your keyword variants can help you to maximize the visibility chances in every search results.
Keyword variants can also lead your site to missed opportunities if mishandled. They may be dangerous to your SEO. Keywords like “cheap bookings” are as risky as useful in search results. Hence, you should exercise cautions and be a good judge to choose keyword variants for your content. You can use relevant, easy to appeal and popular keywords to grab the audience. Still, you have to follow the key rule of including one keyword in every 200 words or 3-5% density for your content.
Relevance is crucial for Google’s search algorithms. As mentioned above, it’s better to avoid overstuffing of keywords to your webpage. Search engines are believed to look for related keywords within a published content for contextual clues so that it gets to know what the content is all about. This approach is referred to as keyword clustering.
Google’s indexing program software encounters keywords on your webpage to contextualize keywords within the content. Clustering relevant keywords together is an effective and highly successful way to increase the chances of your page’s visibility.
For example, if you want to write a blog article about tallest buildings in the USA, you will have to include a listing of the famous skyscrapers of USA. A search engine knows about the tallest buildings of the USA, and the highest building is the “World Trade Centre” of New York City. Hence search engines can expect it as a keyword to include in your article so that it can be indexed in organic search results accordingly.
These kinds of contents are well-structured and usually include several types of descriptions with images. Google will look for these specifications along with relevant keywords in content, headings, images and linking and are clustered properly. Hence, include relevant, unique and clustered keywords in your blog articles. It is an excellent way to improve your ranking and will give authenticity and visibility of your content.
Like everything in the world of SEO, it is critical to use data rather than plan things on assumptions. It helps you to make decisions for your strategy, targeting, keywords and content. Make sure to run an A/B test for your webpage to ensure the harmless visibility of your content in search results. If you have a decline in overall traffic numbers to your website, A/B testing is the best way to give you a proposed direction for your keyword SEO strategy to improve your rankings.
Keyword matter more than anything else for SEO. It is an essential measure to avoid excessive repetition and help visitors with useful content. Take control of your strategy and make your site balanced in keywords with the superior knowledge of SEO.
