Thread: What is a good keyword density?

Some very large and successful sites seem to think that 1.0 to 3.5% is best for Google. I have not seen any guestimates of when a penalty might kick in, with more statements that the page will just be ignored if too high.

I write my paid content for 2.5% to 3.5% for buyers on elance.com and guru.com, and it seems to be satisfactory for them.

You should write objectively about the subject, not thinking about keyword density. The keywords will take care of themselves. What you will discover over time is less than 20% of your traffic will come from the main keyword you are trying to shoot for (in fact you may find that less than 5% of your traffic comes from search engines once you have developed good quality organic links). Most sites are found by visitors typing in unusual requests related to your site. One site I manage has been found on google for over 1,000 keyword phrases during the first week in November. Over 800 of these keywords were used only once.

3 to 5 percent is good enough, make sure that incoming link anchor text does contain your keyword.

Originally Posted by bluefrog59

You should write objectively about the subject, not thinking about keyword density. The keywords will take care of themselves. What you will discover over time is less than 20% of your traffic will come from the main keyword you are trying to shoot for (in fact you may find that less than 5% of your traffic comes from search engines once you have developed good quality organic links). Most sites are found by visitors typing in unusual requests related to your site. One site I manage has been found on google for over 1,000 keyword phrases during the first week in November. Over 800 of these keywords were used only once.

I agree that people should not focus so much on getting every keyword phrase in the text. I am surprised however by your traffic stats you mentioned. Was this for a real estate site? I could see this for a site with tons of pages with product numbers, but I would be surprised for a local real estate site to see that much diversity in the keyword phrase searches.

It probably doesn't matter if you are using blog software or a conventional website, but I have found that it is much easier to obtain higher SEO by using WordPress and posting often. I wouldn't worry about keywords. Post useful information regularly or ad useful info regularly if you are using a conventional site and your site will slowly keep climbing in the search engine's listings.

Read what they say about SEO at Google's Webmaster Tools. You don't need to waste your time and money on keywords or SEO gurus.

Originally Posted by vbcruiser

Read what they say about SEO at Google's Webmaster Tools. You don't need to waste your time and money on keywords or SEO gurus.

Keywords are what people type into the search engines which then go looking for sites that rank for those keywords. Without keywords your site will go nowhere useful.

question for Jim Olenbush -

we have been taught to use the same words in our Description, Title, Keywords and text on opening page - that usually ends up around 3.5 to 4.5 % density - does this approach make sense to you ?

I am familar with SEO. I use WordPress as a stand-a-lone CMS or blog. The catgeories and postings or page headings take care of the keywords and phrases automatically. The search engines gobble them up, so there isn't any work on the part of the WordPress site owner. Creative and regular, on-topic writing, is what works best when using WordPress.

Additionally, there is a WordPress PlugIn that will help with SEO if the site owner wants to fine tune the site. I have used it and it didn't make a difference to any ranking.

Your right about having to work with the SEO for conventional sites. I shouldn't have mentioned conventional built sites in my comments. I suppose there is a need to pay someone to work the SEO on conventional sites, especially if they are static and not dynamic.

I gave up working conventional type sites a long time ago, since becoming a hard core WordPress fan.

The ideal good keyword density is between 15% to 20% in your web page. For this, I have various searched, but, I got various keyword density. In top 5 site, the keyword density is different from the another one. One of them has around 40% to 50%, one has around 10% to 13%, one has little bit 4% to 5%
and one has no.
So, I mean that if your content is matched with user's query, then it will be seemed, but, it is good if we use keyword density approximately 15% to 20%.