The optimal keyword density is crucial for the ranking of your website. To do this, you first need to understand what is behind this SEO strategy.
Why keyword density is important
Finding the right keyword density is a balancing act that you should definitely master for the good of your website and your business. Too few keywords on your page will mean that your content will not be found; too many keywords and you risk being classified as spam and penalized.
- Keyword density indicates how often a particular keyword appears in relation to the total text on a web page.
- Too high a keyword density can be perceived as keyword stuffing and can have negative SEO effects. Search engines like Google may penalize you, causing your website to be ranked lower.
- Too low a keyword density also means that your content ranks lower for the desired search terms and your clientele will therefore have difficulty discovering and visiting your site. This ultimately reduces your chances of turning visitors into customers – the retention rate decreases.
- The difficulty: No one can give an exact number of times a keyword must appear in a text for it to rank well. The minimum is one or two times. If you use the key term five or eight times, it can sound unpleasant depending on the text and writing style. Therefore, the rule applies: read your text out loud at the end, then you will notice whether the keyword appears too often and makes the content sound unnatural.
Tools and methods: How to determine the optimal keyword density
In order to achieve the optimal keyword density, there are various tools and methods that can help you optimize your content accordingly. As a rule of thumb, you can perhaps remember: The keyword can appear one or two times within 100 words. While this rough estimate works well for some content, this number can make other texts noticeably less readable.
- SEO tools like Yoast or Ahrefs offer you ways to check your keyword density.
- You can also calculate the keyword density manually by dividing the number of keywords by the total number of words.
- You should also make sure that you use synonyms and related terms in addition to the same keyword to make the text readable and pleasant for visitors. This way you not only avoid keyword stuffing, but also an increased bounce rate for those who have found their way to your website.
Adjust keyword density regularly
In order to be successful in search engine rankings, the quality and relevance of your content as well as the keywords you use are crucial. You can and should therefore adjust these again and again.
- But remember: You should write content primarily for the reader and not for search engines. This means: Use natural language and so-called LSI keywords – semantically meaningful keywords that help the search engine toto better understand the context.
- For example, when it comes to coughing, LSI keywords would be terms such as dry cough, expectorant and home remedies for coughing. For texts about dogs, LSI keywords such as training or puppies can be helpful.
- Reader-friendly texts with meaningfully embedded keywords have a positive effect on how long users stay on your site and whether they eventually become customers.
- Since search engines also like to make changes to their algorithms, you should regularly check your keywords and keyword density and adjust them if necessary. A long-term SEO strategy can only be successful if you constantly optimize your content.