What Is Keyword Density?

Date First Published: 6th November 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn more about what keyword density is in this article.

Keyword density, also known as keyphrase density, is the percentage of words that match a specific keyword on a page. For example, if a page had 100 words and the keyword 'running shoes' was used three times, the keyword density for that keyword would be 3%. It is not the number of times that a keyword appears on a page. Keyword density is important because search engines, such as Google tries to match a searcher's query to the most relevant pages. Search engines need to understand what a page is about in order to match webpages with a certain query. Keyword density can estimate how important a keyword is on a page.

What Is The Ideal Keyword Density?

Even though there is no perfect percentage of keywords to use, experts recommend that 1-2 important keywords (e.g. the main keywords that appear in the title) are used for every 100 words, which is around 1-2% keyword density. If using a CMS, SEO tools, such as Yoast SEO can assess whether the keyword from the focus keywords has been used enough on a page and not too often and how many times the owner of the website should use it. As long as the target words or phrases are used in the title, description, and page, that is okay.

How To Calculate Keyword Density?

Keyword density can be calculated using this formula:

Keyword density = Number of times a keyword can be found on the page ÷ Total number of words on the page x 100

For example, there were a total of 1000 words on a page and the keyword 'website builder' was used 8 times.

8 ÷ 1000 x 100 = 0.8% keyword density

Is Keyword Density A Ranking Factor?

Originally, keyword density was a key ranking factor for search engines. Adding more keywords to the page could easily be used to move a page up in the search engines for specific keywords. However, as search engines started removing spam and adding more ranking factors to improve the search results shown to searchers, search engines did not take as much notice of keyword density.

Now, keyword density is not a ranking factor as search engines no longer determine the ranking of a page based on keyword frequency and often have algorithms that are capable of detecting keyword stuffing and preventing it from manipulating the search engine ranking. If keyword density was a ranking factor, someone could easily manipulate the search results by repeating the keywords on their page, which is a form of keyword stuffing and delivers a bad user experience. Keyword stuffing is a black-hat SEO technique and can cause pages to be lowered in the SERPs or deindexed.

Even though the density of a specific keyword does not influence the ranking of pages in the search results, the important keywords should be used at least once so that search engines can match the searcher's keywords to that page and understand the content of the page. Keyword density is just a useful metric for website owners and can determine whether they are underusing or overusing a certain keyword on their page. A good way to avoid overusing a specific keyword on a page is to use synonyms. Google tries to match search results relevant to a searcher's query by using synonyms for their keywords.

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