Keyword Density – Does It Matter For SEO?

Back in the day you could keyword spam to get good rankings, this is certainly not the case anymore. Keyword density in my opinion is not longer a factor in Googles algorithm, I could be wrong, but my experience as an SEO tells me that you don’t get any benefit from having a keyword mentioned a certain percentage of times on a page. As the web becomes more semantic, I would definitely try and avoid any spammy looking content that reads incorrectly because you are trying to fiddle your keyword density.

However on pages that I optimise, although I try not to concentrate on the amount of times I repeat a certain keyword, I try and mention them at least once in a heading tag and at least once or twice in the body of the content. About 400-500 words is sufficient to see some SEO benefits from your content.

Some search engines (older ones), may still rank you really well if you spam your keywords, but with Google having such a big market share in the search industry, I would definitely try and avoid this tactic. If you are going to use keyword density in your SEO strategy, I would try and ensure the keywords you are optimising for have a density of less than 1% , this will help make the content look more nature and well written to Google when it indexes it.

Well structured content is great for your SEO, you should also include some internal links to sub pages using the anchor text you want, this will help Google find and index deeper pages on your site.

Just to add if your keyword is a more generic term such as SEO, don’t be scared to go over the 1% threshold, for example : SEO, SEO tips and SEO blog are 3 different keywords, but SEO is mentioned 3 times.

What are your thoughts on the optimum keyword density?