While less and less importance is placed on keyword density in some quarters,
it still has an important role to play in the formation and execution of effective
search engine optimisation. Specifically, pages that have too high a keyword
density and appear over optimised are likely to face penalties from the search
engines. In contrast, a sensible but effective keyword density can help a website
get indexed and rank well in the search engines.

Website Content And On Page SEO

Website content is far from being the only facet to search engine optimisation,
but it is an important part of on page optimisation. Other on page factors
include the appropriate use of tags, optimised images, and excellent navigation.
In total, though, the search engines consider hundreds of factors when determining
the relevancy and overall value of your web pages and while keyword density
is believed to be weighted quite highly among these it is part of a bigger
overall picture.

Early Search Engine Results

In the early days of search engines, and therefore search engine optimisation,
the major search engines relied heavily on keyword density. They used the measure
of the number of times a keyword was found within the body of a content in
order to help formulate early search results. While it’s obviously not an entirely
precise method of measuring relevance it did provide the search engines with
a method to effectively index and rank all the pages in their index.

Early Keyword Density Requirements

During these early search engine days, websites that had high keyword densities
tended to perform well. Densities as high as 5% and more would virtually secure
a top spot in search engines like Google while Yahoo would happily rank sites
with even greater density in their top positions. This led to the early emergence
of search engine spam. Search engine optimisation meant generating content
that contained little more than numerous keywords repeated over and over again
along with some method of monetising the resulting traffic.

Algorithms Evolved

Eventually the search engines took steps to resolve this issue, led in no
small part by Google. Search engine algorithms evolved so that they included
many more factors than just keyword density and they even began to penalise
those sites that used unethical search engine optimisation techniques. Pages
that had previously fared well because of blatantly manufactured content began
to slide down the result pages.

Modern Search Engine Optimisation

Over time, this progression has continued and modern search engine optimisation
relies more on the use of several related keywords with lower keyword density
than ever before. This semantic form of indexing has led to improved search
results and greater benefit to the search engine users. As such, search engine
optimisation techniques have also had to evolve to prevent being blacklisted
and ensure the best possible results.

The Correlation Between SEO And Keyword Density

By using instances of a keyword in the body of web page content it indicates
to search engines the topic of a page. All of the major search engines, including
Google, are still believed to consider keyword density as an important factor
in their ranking equations. However, rather than creating disjointed and unnatural
appearing content it is possible to craft much more beneficial content that
will benefit you in terms of search engine optimisation but also visitor conversion
and, subsequently, website performance.

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