Copywriting for search engines is one of the more important aspects of the SEO industry. Ensuring your content is relevant and keyword rich is an effective method to “impress” the search engines. By impress, I mean that the majority of search engines value optimized content with keyword-laden text. However, if you have too much keyword density, Google and others can consider this spam, and may penalize your site.
Keyword issues? Discuss them at WebProWorld.
Copywriting is 1/3 of the puzzle…
With this in mind, a question was asked on WebProWorld about how much of a keyword density percentage is too much? Taking a quick glance around at the various SEO experts, there is no exact answer. However, by using the advice and knowledge of these industry gurus, I will attempt to clarify the issue a little.
According to an article written by Karon Thackston that appeared on HighRankings.com called The Magical Keyword Density Formula, keyword density is only part of the total SEO package. Karon says, “Copywriting, in my opinion and the opinions of respected search engine optimizers, is 1/3 of the puzzle; but there are other pieces to the puzzle, too.” Because of this, Karon states that there is no magical keyword density formula to determine how much is too much and how much isn’t.
Which brings us back to the WebProWorld discussion. Jade456 posed this request: “I’d like to get some opinions on the best keyword density percentage. I’ve heard some people say to keep it under 10% and other say the higher the better. I’m thinking that it should stay under 10, for fear of being dropped for spamming. Anyone have any thoughts?”
Jade’s request was almost immediately answered by cbp, a WebProWorld moderator, who said, “I have some pages that (accidentally) have keyword density’s of >50% and still manage to rank high – I have seen all the different advice all over the place. My approach is to make sure that the keyword(s) I am targeting have the highest density on the page, but kept as low as possible (yes
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest search news.
