Keyword Density

It's All about Keyword Density

What is keyword density? It's a percentage, calculated this way:

Number of times keyword appears on a page / Total word count on page = Keyword Density

Keyword density is usually displayed as a percentage. So, if you have a page that has 100 words on it, and you have a keyword appear 5 times on the page, your page would have a keyword density of 5%.

(5 / 100 = 5%)

In a real life example, the search term "personalized URL" has an overall keyword density on this page of 3.05%:

(15 instances of the keywords /981 total words on the site = 3.05%)

However, not all keywords on a page are treated the same. Keywords in the title tags, page name and section headings are often given higher weight than keywords that appear in the regular content area of the page.

Here's how the keywords break down in the different areas of the site:

Title Tag: 1 Keyword, 8 total times, Keyword Density: 25.00%

Page Name: 1 Keyword, 3 total words, Keyword Density: 66.00%

Linked Text: 1 Keywords, 61 total words, Keyword Density: 3.27%

URLs in Links: 2 Keywords, 237 total words, Keyword Density: 1.68%

Visible Text: 7 Keywords, 627 total words, Keyword Density: 2.23%

Total: 15 Keywords, 981 total words, Keyword Density: 3.05%

This keyword term currently has a ranking of #2 in Google: 

So, how much keyword density is too much? It depends on which study you read, but it's generally best to keep your keyword density between 3-6%.

Anything more, and you'll be penalized for trying to spam the search engines.

As a general rule of thumb, if the copy of the site makes sense to a human reading it, you should be fine. But if you repeat the same keyword five times in a row (Personalized URL, Personalized URL, etc), then you can be banned from search engines or penalized.