Does Keyword Density Matter?

Your SEO Agency has probably already told you that there are hundreds of ways the search engines determine the relevance of your site. No-one apart from the search engines themselves actually know what these factors are. Each factor is weighted differently so some are more important than others.

One such factor that a search engine uses to determine a sites relevance is keyword density. If you think about it logically this of course makes sense. The more times a phrase appears on a page the more likely that page is to contain information on that search term. Keyword density can work against you however if you place the phrase on your page too many times. This is known as keyword stuffing and in a blatant spam technique.

What can keyword density tell us?

Keyword density is not the deciding factor on how your site will rank however it can tell you something. If the word isn’t on the page at all then you probably won’t rank for that keyword. If your keyword isn’t in the title it will be harder to rank for that search term. If you put your keywords into the header tags this could help. The density is not the only thing but how high the phrase is on the page and far the repetitions of the term spaced will also have an impact.

There is however plenty of SEO agencies who will tell you that keyword density is not considered by the search engines. However, how can this be true for certain? Take the search term ‘SEO Agency’ I did an analysis on the top 4 organic ranking sites here is what I found.

Keyword density of the term seo agency for Further

Keyword density of the term seo agency for 4psmarketing

Keyword density of the term seo agency for AccuraCast

Keyword density of the term seo agency for Dotseo

The results are interesting it appears the keyword density of the title is the most important thing. As the top 3 results have a higher density in the title, although the site in position 4 has a title density of 0%.

So what could explain their inclusion in the top 4 positions? If you look at the keyword density of the other elements you can see the body of the site in position 4 has the highest density so from this very crude analysis it appears that the title is the most important followed by the body. This is a brief analysis and further research will need to be done to draw some conclusive findings.

The consensus is rather than focus on keyword density you should make sure your pages read well. Don’t try too hard to get your keyphrase into your copy. The most important thing is to have interesting content for people to read.

If you want to know whether your keyword density is hindering your search engine progress talk to BDR London today.