What Is Keyword Density In SEO? (Quick Beginner’s Guide)
Keyword density used to be an important metric for search engine optimization (SEO).
Sites using the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress used to try and hit a specific keyword density score or stay within a specific range in order to properly optimize their pages for specific keywords.
But how important is this metric for SEO today?
In this post, we examine what this metric is, whether or not it’s still important, and how to properly optimize web pages for specific keywords.
What is keyword density?
Keyword density refers to the number of times you use your target keyword on a web page. It’s presented as a percentage.
To calculate keyword density, use the following keyword density formula:
( number of times target keyword is used / total number of words ) x 100
So, if you used your target keyword 25 times in an article that’s 2,280 words long, you’d divide 25 by 2,280 to get 0.011 (round to the nearest thousandths place, or the third number after the decimal).
Then, multiply by 100 to get your keyword density score of 1.1%.
Is keyword density still important today?
Google and other search engines do not check your site for keyword density. It’s an outdated SEO tactic that only leads to keyword stuffing, a blackhat SEO tactic in which a site attempts to artificially increase their ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) by using the same keyword over and over again on a single web page.
So, is using keyword density for SEO useful at all in this day and age? Yes and no.
There’s no benefit to trying to hit the same keyword frequency score for every article you write. It may only lead to lower search engine rankings if you wind up over optimizing for a specific keyword.
Search engines understand that two different phrases might have the same meaning, such as “sliced bananas” and “cut bananas.”
So, when you use “sliced bananas” in your article, you’re also optimizing it for the phrase “cut bananas,” and vice versa.
This is why using a keyword a certain number of times in an article is an outdated SEO practice.
Instead of trying to reach an ideal keyword density score, use this metric to determine whether or not you’re over optimizing for your target keyword.
How to target keywords without over optimizing
The best way to avoid over optimizing for your target keyword is to ensure your keyword appears in one H1 tag and one H2 tag.
You can use it in other tags and throughout your article, but only use it once in these higher-level tags.
If you need to use a specific keyword again in a different H2 tag in your article, use a keyword variant instead.
In fact, you should use keyword variants and keyword synonyms in place of your target keyword throughout your article to avoid over optimizing for any one keyword as doing so may only harm your search rankings.
You should also optimize your article for search intent by including related keywords and only using relevant keywords.
On-page optimization tools
Keyword density matters in the sense that using the same keyword over and over again may do more harm than good when Googlebot crawls your web page.
This is where on-page optimization tools are helpful. They tell you how many times a specific keyword appears in your article.
We don’t recommend using a plugin for this purpose, such as Yoast.
Yoast does check that you’re using your target keyword in your SEO title, page title, URL and meta description, but it also recommends you to use your target keyword in the first paragraph of your post as well as in several H2 and H3 subheadings.
It’ll give your post a lower on-page SEO score if you don’t.
While there’s nothing wrong with using your target keyword in the first paragraph of your article, in a single H2 tag and even a few H3 tags, it’s also not as much of a requirement as the plugin makes it out to be and may only lead to you over optimizing your post for a specific keyword.
Google doesn’t care about keyword density in subheadings.
It uses your target keyword, keyword variants, related keywords, and even things like internal and external links to understand what topic you’re writing about and whether or not your article matches the search intent of that topic.
For this reason, dedicated on-page optimization tools are much better at helping you optimize your article for a specific keyword.
Recommended on-page optimization tools
Frase, Surfer SEO and Scalenut all offer the features you need to optimize your articles for a specific keyword by giving you the following guidelines to follow:
- Word count
- Number of images to include
- Number of times to use your target keyword
- Related keywords to include
- Number of times to use related keywords
These tools acquire these metrics by analyzing the top results on SERPs that rank for your target keyword.
They grade you on a score from 0 to 100 based on how well optimized they feel your article is compared to those top results.
We recommend aiming for a score between 70 and 90 to avoid over optimizing your article. We also recommend staying within its limits for your target keyword.
All of these tools work great, but Frase is our top recommendation.
We mostly recommend Frase as it’s beginner-friendly, affordable, includes additional writing tools and integrates with WordPress.
Sign up for a free trial of Frase.
Keyword Density Checker
If you’re only worried about your target keyword, use a free tool called Keyword Density Checker by SEO Review Tools.
It allows you to check for keyword density based on a URL, text or SERP result. This means you can also use it to analyze your competitor’s keyword density scores.
It’s a useful tool, but we recommend being cautious when you use the tool for competitive analysis.
Some of your competitors may be quite authoritative, which means they’re able to get away with more. They judge big sites by very different rules compared to small sites.
Note: It’s entirely likely that Google uses data compression as a way to detect spam. If the compression ratio of your page is as high as 4.0, it may be considered spam. Essentially, compression repeated words and replaces them with shorter references. The end result a much smaller file size. The more significant the drop in file size, the more likely a document/page is to be considered spam. SEJ has a good article on the topic. This is why keyword stuffing is bad and keyword density can be dangerous if its too high.
Final thoughts
Keyword density is an old school on-page SEO tactic that was used to help articles rank. But, optimizing for a specific keyword density doesn’t work any more. It hasn’t for a very long time.
If you take that approach, you’re more likely to hurt your rankings instead of helping them.
Instead, use tools like Frase and Scalenut to analyze competing articles and optimize your content against those. They’ll tell you which phrases to include and how many times.
This approach will help you find the right balance between under-optimizing and over-optimizing your articles.
Just remember that while these tools will score your articles on a scale of 0-100, the goal isn’t to get the max score, it’s to ensure your article is competitive against the content that Google already ranks.
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