Keyword density is the amount of times keywords appear in your website content. Too high, and your keyword density has the ability to hurt your search engine rankings. But too low, and your keyword density will have an equally detrimental affect.
The key to keyword density is to attain a delicate balance of valuable content with keywords carefully, creatively and casually woven throughout in order to maximize your SEO efforts while maintaining a high level of legitimacy and quality for your customers and site visitors.
A good rate to shoot for when trying to achieve a perfect balance of keyword density is to ensure that roughly 3% to 5% of your website content is driven by keywords. Any less than that and your ranking may fall. Any more than that, and your site may be flagged.
So, how exactly do you tackle this keyword balancing act? Let’s take a look at an example of a sentence that effectively and casually applies a keyword (“website design”) as part of website content:
“Our firm specializes in quality website design with a focus on branding, SEO and customer acquisition.”
As you can see, the keyword is inserted without force and offers substance. Now, let’s take a look at a poor attempt to include a keyword within website content:
“Our website design firm specializes in quality website design with a focus on branding, SEO and customer acquisition for website design.”
The keyword is clearly forced, is not easy to read, and will most likely be flagged by search engines and what they consider to be “keyword loading”. In other words, the search engines “think” that you may not be a legitimate business and are only out to acquire site visitors rather than actual customers. This will not serve you well.
Trying to weave keywords into your site content in an organic way can be a difficult process. A good way to do this is to actually write each page first without trying to consciously include your keywords. Then, once you have a draft complete, go back and review the content and see if and how many times your keywords appear. You may be surprised at how often you actually use your keywords in a natural way. If not, then look for opportunities to insert your keywords in places where they will appear natural, even if they weren’t.
For example, let’s say you need to insert the keyword “website development” into the following sentence:
“Our firm specializes in quality website design with a focus on branding, SEO and customer acquisition.”
You might consider adding your keyword in the following way:
“Our firm specializes in quality website design and website development with a focus on branding, SEO and customer acquisition.”
Not all instances are this cut and dry, but if you are creative and can take some time to think outside the box, you can and will become an expert at keyword density, and just how little and how often to make it work. Remember, balance is “key”.
Download my free keyword research report to learn more about why keyword research is vital to creating endless streams of traffic and income.
