So you’ve built your website, you know what keywords
you want to target (i.e. what words your customers are
searching for), and you’re ready to write your
copy. You’ve been told that you should use your
keywords frequently so that you appear in search results
for those words. But what does “frequently”
mean?

How many times should you use your primary keyword?
This case study helps answer that question.

In order to understand optimum keyword usage, we first
need to have some way of measuring keyword frequency.
In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world, frequency
is actually referred to as density. Keyword density
is a measure of the number of times your keyword appears
on a page expressed as a percentage of the total wordcount
of that page. For example, if your page has 100 words,
and your keyword phrase appears 5 times, its density
is 5%. So when you hear someone say “keyword density”,
that’s normally what they’re talking about.
(TIP: You can automatically check the keyword
density of your page at LiveKeywordAnalysis.com.)

However, there is another, more complex measure of
keyword density which takes into account the text components
in the HTML of the page (i.e. the meta tags: Title,
Keywords, Alt Text, Description, and Comments). When
using this measure, you don’t just count the words
your visitor sees; you also count the words in your
meta tags. For example, if you have 100 words on your
home page, 10 words in your Title tag, 20 words in your
Description tag, 70 words in your Alt tags, and 10 words
in your Comments tag, your total wordcount for the page
is 100 + 10 + 20 + 70 + 10 = 210. Similarly, when counting
keywords, you don’t just add up the number of times
a visitor will see your keyword, you also count the
number of times that keyword appears in your meta tags.
For example, if your keyword appears 5 times in the
home page copy, 3 times in the Title tag, 5 times in
the Description tag, 30 times in your Alt tags, and
twice in your Comments tag, your total keyword count
is 5 + 3 + 5 + 30 + 2 = 45. So with a total wordcount
of 210 and a keyword count of 45, your keyword density
is 45/210 x 100 = 21%. It is argued that this measure
of keyword density is more relevant as the search engines
measure density in this fashion. (TIP: You can
automatically check the keyword density of your page
using this more complex measure at GoRank.com.)

As you can see, you need to be very aware of which
measure you’re talking about when you’re talking
“keyword density”. But let me reiterate; mostly
when people talk about keyword density, they’re
talking the simple measure.

And now down to business… What keyword density
(of either kind) should you be targeting on your website?

There’s a lot of debate surrounding this issue
because the search engine companies don’t disclose
the details of their algorithms (as that would allow
people to abuse the system). Instead, people working
in the SEO world are left to figure it out based on
their experience.

A recent article by respected SEO and Blog expert,
Wayne Hurlbert, (see Keyword
Density: SEO Considerations) suggests that Google
sees pages with a keyword density of greater than 2%
as spam. It was this article which prompted me to analyze
the keyword density of my copywriting website.

CASE STUDY

The Website: This case study analyzes
the website for my advertising copywriting and SEO
copywriting business, Divine Write – http://www.divinewrite.com.
For my primary keyword, my site is now on page 1 of
Google.com (out of approximately 900,000 search results).

Number of pages on site: At the time
of writing, my website contained a total of 53 pages.

Primary keyword phrase: “copywriter”

Average keyword density: Using the
simple measure of keyword density discussed above,
the average keyword density of my copywriting website
is 1.9%. Using the complex measure it’s 4.9%.

Keyword density range: Using the simple
measure, my density ranged from 0.4% to 7.6%. Using
the complex measure it ranged from 1.6% to 17.5%

• The figures and corresponding ranking detailed in
  this case study may not be directly relevant to every
  site. There’s a lot I don’t know about the
  algorithms and there are bound to be other factors
  at play which I don’t know about.


• With regard to Wayne Hurlbert’s article, it
  would seem that he is referring to keyword density
  as calculated using the simple method discussed above.


• The range figures are noteworthy because they suggest
  that you don’t need to be paranoid about having
  some pages with a very high density and some with
  a very low density.

A simple keyword density of 1.9% can be enough for
a first page ranking in Google.com (assuming you have
enough quality backlinks – see SEO
for CEOs and How
to Top Google by Writing Articles for more information).

Happy SEO writing!

About the Author

* Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.