How to make a big splash quickly with your SEO
Keyword density...yeah, it's THAT important
I wasn't sure how to take PJ Fusco's recent article on Clickz on keyword density. I have greatly enjoyed watching SEOs downplay the significance of keyword density the last couple years, always assuming I was a part of the silent conspiracy against the newbies to the world of search. So either one of two things happened here:
- PJ blew it for us.
- A lot of SEOs really don't think keyword density is that important.
I'm starting to think that number two is closer to the truth. PJ has been around longer and is better tied into the industry than I, so I will trust her judgment. However, I'm still amazed how many industry types talk around this issue, citing increased understanding of semantics by the search engines and such. No doubt that engines are getting smarter about understanding synonyms and crediting them appropriately, but that still doesn't take away from the importance of old school keyword density.
I had been planning on putting such an article together for some time, but since the cat's out of the bag, I won't go into the level of detail I had originally planned. Instead, I will simply offer up one very simple example of a client project I have been working on in the past week.
The situation: A 20+ year old, established company with a website that went live in 2004 realized they were nowhere to be found for targeted search terms. Regionally, the company was rather successful, and had naturally built up a fair amount of back links compared to competitors. Important to note here, however, is that the anchor text to these backlinks were not of any strategic value - typically the company name or the company president. Unfortunately, the company name was fairly generic as well. The one key phrase they were interested in didn't show any extremely well positioned competitors from an SEO standpoint, but did show 15,600,000 results...and they weren't one of them.
My actions: Of course the first thing I looked at were on site factors. Code looked okay, meta data needed some tweaking, and the content was clearly substandard. It was effective from a business standpoint, but it clearly wasn't written with keywords in mind. I measured the keyword density for the number one ranked Google result and then matched it for the page I was optimizing for. I then slightly upped the density of the individual keyword density to narrowly beat the number one result. Keyword prominence was relatively equal. I also added the phrase to the page title, description and keywords. That's it.
The results: I literally did nothing before running a keyword report with rank checker a week later. I went from not being listed according to the tool to a ranking of 22. I'm assuming I was somewhere 200+ but never took the time to actually make sure...needless to say, the site was originally buried. Over the next week I checked that keyword every day and watched it rise all the way to the sixth result. As an additional bonus, two other longer tail variations had also earned first page rankings.
This isn't the first time I've gotten results like this, either. So for those who continue to brush off the importance of keyword density, please continue to do so, it's making my job a whole lot easier.
For you SEO DIYers out there, here are some handy tools I've found for keyword density:
http://www.ranks.nl - a fantastic tool for measuring and comparing keyword density between sites.
SEO quake - a lovely toolbar that any SEO should consider, with a variety of great tools, and a convenient keyword density tool to use while surfing.
e3KWD - extremely handy tool, as it lets you check density of .txt files, so if you're writing for a new site or a new unpublished page.
About Joe Ford
Joe Ford is a Managing Partner at Netvantage Marketing. In addition to overseeing day to day business operations of Netvantage, he directs paid search strategy for over 14 paid search clients. Ford is on the Lansing Chamber Board of Directors, and the Executive Board of the Capital Area IT Council.
Tags: definition of keyword density, importance of keyword density, keyword density tools, search engine keyword density, seo keword density, seo keywords, seo tips, what's proper keyword density
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[...] it remains a mainstay in their SEO lexicon. Obviously, I’ve run my own experiments and seen my own successes in the past with upping my keyword density, which is why I’ve lauded its success, despite “knowing [...]