Keyword Density -

An ethical approach to keyword content is highly recommended, with practices such as keyword stuffing within body copy and hiding text through text colour, scripting and CSS known to be bad strategies for long-term visibility in search engines. Search engine algorithms are constantly adapting to prevent such techniques from having any value.

The best practice is to achieve a moderate density of keywords within the text. The keywords selected should also be relevant to both the headings and title of the page, along with links that point towards the page and other page factors such as images and drop-down menus.

Measuring keyword density -

Specifically, if a keyword appears once in a 100-word document, it has a keyword density of 1%. It would be optimal to achieve a key term density for target terms of around 5% including synonyms, plurals and keyword variations (ideally, these would be chosen from the keyword list with most query volumes).

Clearly, the challenge is to be able to naturally and relevantly incorporate a moderate keyword density into the body copy. It should not be too blatantly obvious to the audience; instead it should be relevant and appropriate.

On the pages, base your editing on the most appropriate content for that page, using a handful of competitive keywords (along with variations and plurals) as often as possible (within the guidelines above). It would be reasonable to take the keyword density to 10% for some of the more competitive terms.

However, this should be correlated to where the page appears in the site. For instance, a low level page will probably not target a high level term, regardless of keyword density - unless several other factors are in sync (such as an optimised title tag, links towards the page, and location within the site navigation).

Keyword density does require occassional tweaks, but has become less of a factor over the past couple years. Still, if you need an easy way to measure your keyword density, check out: http://www.ranks.nl/cgi-bin/ranksnl/spider/spider.cgi?lang=

Keyword targeting in PPC campaigns -

Keyword density can also help your site from a PPC point of view, as the right amount of keywords on your landing page can increase your "quality score" in turn reducing your bids. This means that your use of keyterms can be just as crucial on pages for non-SEO work too.

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