Is Keyword Density Important?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

We’re still always hearing people talk about keyword density, but I’ve never really considered keyword density a really important matter for search engine optimization. Whether you choose a keyword density of 1% or 6% isn’t going to matter much in the search engines if you don’t have a few other things going for you in your blog posts and web copy. So what other things am I talking about?

I’m talking about keyword placement, which is infinitely more important than how many of your keywords are in your content. Again, keyword placement is far more important than keyword density. So where should you place your keywords? I’d say three places:

Your URL
Your page title
Your headline

These are the three most important places to make sure you put your keywords. Your domain name and/or permalink should contain your keyword. Your page title is a very important place for your keyword to go. And your headline should not be finalized without your keyword hitting the first half of it.

Remember: Keyword placement is much more important than keyword density. Focus on great content, not spammy content for your search engine optimization efforts.

December 3, 2008
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4 Comments
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Content Development

4 Responses to “Is Keyword Density Important?”

Susan says:

December 4, 2008 at 2:21 pm

Analyze your webpage’s keyword density with this tool : tools.khrido.com/webtools/keyword-density-checker.aspx
Spyros says:

December 10, 2008 at 4:26 am

Hi Nick,

I would also like to add to the list the Description META. In my opinion it is the second most important TAG after the Title TAG. I have found that the Description META plays an important role in a web page’s optimization.

I have successfully managed in the past to achieve a good ranking for clients that are with full flash websites, just by manipulating the Description META and the Title TAG.

Do you agree?

Thanks
Wilfred says:

January 8, 2009 at 11:32 am

Spyros,
I don’t agree with you on META Description; meta description is an old stuff and recent, more powerful search engines don’t place premium on them. They rather delight in site relevant and key word density which is rightly said by Susan.
Allen Taylor says:

January 8, 2009 at 1:53 pm

Wilfred, you have that ass backward. Keyword density is so Web 1.0. It’s pre-Google optimization. Google actually places a lot of importance on Meta Description and if you leave it blank then Google will just pull something off of your page to use as a snippet in its SERPs. In that regard, Spyros is right. It’s the second most important meta tag, more important than keywords and certainly more important than counting your words and using long division. And can you share with us please which search engines are “recent and more powerful” than Google?