Keyword Density Checker

What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is a crucial concept in the realm of search engine optimization (SEO). It refers to the proportion or frequency of a specific keyword or key phrase within a given webpage. By understanding and utilizing keyword density effectively, website owners and content creators can enhance their online visibility and improve their search engine rankings.

Keyword density, often expressed as a percentage, represents the ratio of how often a targeted keyword or key phrase appears within a webpage's content compared to the total word count. It is an important metric used by search engines to assess the relevance of a webpage to a particular search query.

Importance of Keyword Density in SEO

Keyword density is essential for SEO because Google tries to show a list of the most relevant web pages on SERP to a user based on their search query.

If their search phrase is present within your content, you’ll get a chance to rank on SERP. In other words, the presence of key phrases within your content helps Google understand the context of your content better.

How to calculate Keyword Density?

The algorithm for calculating keyword density is simple:

Divide the number of times a keyword appears on a page by the total number of words on the page.

For example, if your page has 1,000 words and the keyword is used 10 times, the calculation is as follows:

10 / 1000 = .001

To convert this into a percentage, multiply it by 100, which in this case is 1%.

There is another formula called TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) that is sometimes used to assess keyword usage. TF measures the frequency of a keyword on specific pages, while IDF counts the number of times the same word appears across multiple pages on your site. The resulting value helps determine the keyword's relevance to specific pages.

Although TF is easy to understand, it's important not to overlook IDF. The goal of IDF is to gauge how rare or common a keyword is across multiple documents. IDF values range between 0 and 1 - the closer to 0, the more frequently the word appears across your pages. Conversely, the closer to 1, the more it appears on a single page and not others.

How to keep keyword density natural and avoid Keyword Stuffing

What is Keyword Stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is when you keep repeating the same keyword multiple times within your content to the extent that it looks entirely unnatural.

Earlier, keyword stuffing made reading and deciphering articles hard for the audience, but now search engine bots can detect these irregular patterns and ban the page from the search results altogether.

Example of Keyword Stuffing

Here is a simple example to understand the concept of keyword stuffing clearly:

“If you’re looking for the best office bag, look no further. Our brand offers the best office bag that you could want for business or pleasure. With padding in our liners and a special pocket for your car keys and chargers, this is the best office bag.”

Since keyword density is measured,

KR=3, TW=47, NWK=3

KD = ( KR / ( TW -( KR x ( NWK-1 ) ) ) ) x 100

KD = (3 / (47 - (3 x (3-1)))) x 100

KD = 7.31%

Since the maximum threshold should be within 1.5% – 2%, the above example is a case of keyword stuffing-something that Google strongly doesn’t recommend.

Best practices to Avoid Keyword Stuffing

To promote a healthy keyword density and avoid Keyword Stuffing, here are a few best practices to follow:

• choose a primary keyword related to your content with low competition.Once you assign a primary keyword to a webpage, don’t target the same phrase to rank another web page.This will prevent your web pages from competing against each other for a single keyword and keep your content unique.
• Write more than 300 words. To improve the chances of ranking your web page for a given keyword, try writing more than 300 words of content in the body copy.Google prefers ranking content that is relevant, accurate and answers the user queries.Add secondary keywords, LSI keywords, and long-tail keyword variations in the copy.Another way to justify the relevance of your primary keyword on a web page is by adding secondary keywords, LSI keywords, and long-tail keyword variations in the body copy.
• Add your keyword on the right page elements. While doing keyword optimization, it is necessary to note the important places where you must include your keyword- such as the page title, title tag, meta description, first paragraph of the body, on the image Alt tag, etc.
• Use the Appropriate Keyword Density in Your Copy. As mentioned above, try keeping your keyword density around 2% to stay within the best keyword optimization practices laid out by Google.
• Content Quality. Write your content as naturally as possible. Don’t try to write content centered around your target keyword, instead write the content and then try inserting the keywords naturally.
• Make necessary changes in the verb tenses of the keywords to make the content look meaningful.
• Always keep in mind the user-experience before implementing any on-page optimization for keywords.

The principle of the solution to Keyword Stuffing

Search engines, such as Google, give more importance to keyword clustering. They attempt to understand the content thematically by identifying topic clusters. In order to accomplish this, they examine words that are semantically related. For instance, instead of only analyzing web pages for a single keyword like "goldfish," Google acknowledges associated terms like "fish food" and "fish tank" in order to gain a better overall understanding of the content's topic.

Additionally, search engines consider variations of keywords, which is also referred to as "stemming." This includes plurals or alternative conjugations of a word. Using the previous example of "goldfish," keyword variations would encompass terms like "goldfishes."

On a basic level, keyword density does play a role in SEO, especially if you are aiming to target keywords and rank for competitive terms. It is always recommended to incorporate keywords, variations of keywords, and related keywords in your content. This allows search engines to properly index and rank your content for your desired target keyword.