A Few Words about Keywords

Introduction

Keywords are the connection between your Website content and the prospective customer using a search engine to find you. The image below shows the Cache of a Website page stored by Google. Note how keywords are highlighted throughout the page. This image shows exactly how Google views a Website page in terms of its keywords.

Because of this connection between search engines and your Website, it is useful to anticipate what words or phrases a person would type into a search engine when looking for your Website or product. Think in terms of key phrases, not just key words because proximity between words is important. Research, test and choose keywords based on how they work for you.

When generating Website content it is also useful to keep in mind these keywords. Utilize these keywords in the page title and headings, as well as bolded, italicized, or otherwise distinguished throughout the Website page.

However, it is also critical to keep in mind that content must first be useful and pertinent to your Website visitors. Consequently, analysis and any subsequent modification of Website content to optimize keyword density must still result in an article, blog or other Web page that is suitable for human readers. So readers must be the top priority in creating and evaluating any Website content!

Cautionary Notes from Google about Keywords and Content

According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog post “Google does not use the keywords Meta Tag in web ranking” the Keywords Meta Tag does not influence the search results ranking in Google. According to the post, Google stopped considering the keywords Meta Tag “Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.”

Within the content of Google’s Webmaster Help Center the emphasis is clearly placed on the importance of high-quality content that Website visitors will find useful, please see:
(1) Google-friendly sites {Google Webmaster Help Answer}
(2) Little or no original content {Google Webmaster Help Answer}

Google even directly addresses the practice of Keyword Stuffing in the Webmaster Help Answer “Keyword stuffing”.

Google also does not publish any guidelines regarding the Keyword Density within Articles, Blog Posts or other Website pages. Please see the Google Webmaster Central Help Forum post “Rules of appropriate keyword density in an article.” However, within Webmaster Tools, Google does provide Keyword performance statistics, so that Webmasters can gain insight into how Google is interpreting the content of their Website. Please see the Google Webmaster Tools Help Article “Keywords.” The image below shows the Search Queries page within Google Webmaster Tools, note the keywords and key phrases identified and the statistics displayed for each.

Keyword Density Defined

The Wikipedia article “Keyword Density” gives a brief overview of the topic, and provides links to several online tools for checking the keyword density of a Web page. Keyword Density is generally defined as the number of times a given keyword appears in given section of text, divided by the total number of words.

Please note that in measuring the density of a keyword phrase you need to account for the number of words in the keyword phrase. For example if you have a three-word keyword phrase that appears once in a 100 word passage of text, the keyword density is 3%. Although the exact measure of what is an appropriate keyword density varies depending on the source, 3% seems to be a fairly popular answer.

Measuring Keyword Density

While there are several online tools for analyzing the keyword density of Web pages listed in the Wikipedia Keyword Density article. Two of the tools also provide results for two and three word phrases, and would therefore seem to be superior:

(1) SEOzy.com - SEO Tools
http://seotools.seozy.com/tools/keyword-density-checker/

(2) Link Vendor Professional SEO Tools
http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/keyword-density.html

If you would like to analyze the keyword density of offline text, there are a couple of applications that provide the option to paste text (from MS Word or another word processing application) and thus analyze content before it is incorporated into a Web Page:

(1) Mark Horrell - Keyword Density Analyzer
http://www.markhorrell.com/tools/density.asp

(2) Textalyser – Text Analysis Tool
http://textalyser.net/

Other Keyword Density References

[1] Google does not use the keywords Meta Tag in web ranking {Google Webmaster Central Blog}, Monday, September 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

[2] Google-friendly sites {Google Webmaster Help Answer}
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349

[3] Little or no original content {Google Webmaster Help Answer}
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361

[4] Keyword stuffing {Google Webmaster Help Answer}
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66358

[5] Rules of appropriate keyword density in an article {Google Webmaster Central Help Forum}
November 24, 2009
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=3a3f409ffec7a6f7

[6] Keywords {Google Webmaster Tools Help Articles}
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35255

[7] Keyword Density (Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_density

[8] SEOzy.com - SEO Tools (Online Keyword Analyzer)
http://seotools.seozy.com/tools/keyword-density-checker/

[9] Link Vendor Professional SEO Tools (Online Keyword Analyzer)
http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/keyword-density.html

[10] Mark Horrell - Keyword Density Analyzer (Offline Keyword Analyzer)
http://www.markhorrell.com/tools/density.asp

[11] Textalyser – Text Analysis Tool (Offline Keyword Analyzer)
http://textalyser.net/