subject: How Important is Keyword Density for SEO? [print this page] How Important is Keyword Density for SEO?
Keywords are a very important element to search engine optimization, which is also known as SEO. All websites have content and it is within this text content that keywords are placed. When a search engine scans the website, the search engine crawlers pick up on the keywords and this helps determine how and where the website should be placed within the search engine's results. Even though keywords are not the only factor when it comes to SEO, they are a very important factor.
There is one debate about keywords however that those who work in SEO cannot seem to agree on. The debate surrounds keyword density (how many times the keyword or key phrase should be placed within the content). There are some in the industry which believe that the keyword density should not be any more than 2 to 3% of the content. In other words, if you had a 500 word article, the number of times the keywords could be used based on a 3% density is 15 times.
Others in the SEO industry believe that keyword density is not important as long as the content writer does not stuff the article full of the keywords. Stuffing the article means that the keywords are interjected so many times that the article is hard to read and things look out of place.
How important is keyword density for SEO?
The main factors are keyword stuffing or using the keywords too little within the article. There are articles that have a 2% keyword density that perform well and there are articles that have a 10% density that perform well too. There is no certain way to tell which density rate is right or which one is best. It seems that when it comes to keyword density and search engine optimization, having a well written article that is relevant, meaningful and uses keywords in the proper places is more important that concentrating on exact density numbers.
