Keyword Density and Keyword Density Clouds
Keyword density is a key part of effective on-page SEO, however, if approached incorrectly it can be a hindrance to your search marketing. A content rich website should offer information that naturally contains a number of contextual keywords and phrases associated with the market/sector the site is in. There are a number of useful free resources online that allow you to assess your website keyword visibility at a page-by-page level.
SEOChat.com provide an excellent keyword density tool that allows you to define a number of parameters prior to running your check. This includes variable length of results to display, control over which elements of the code should be included such as meta data, alt attributes and title tags. You can also specify whether numeric characters should be included. You can specify the number of words per phrase that should be assessed so you can get a more accurate picture of your/your clients keyword phrases to optimise. For example when we first set up our own website we checked the density difference between the keywords ‘internet marketing’ and ‘enpiem internet marketing’.
The keyword phrase ‘internet marketing’ appeared 18 times on the page when we included META tags, ALT attributes and Title. This delivered a density of 8.78%. When we removed the META tags, ALT attributes and title this dropped to 9 repetitions and a keyword density of 6.04%. For the three word phrase ‘enpiem internet marketing’ the density is 3.41% with 7 repetitions. Webconfs say that the recommended density for good practice SEO is 3-7% so we removed five inclusions of the keyword phrase ‘internet marketing’ from META content and ALT attributes and this dropped the repetition to 13 uses of the keyword and a keyword density of 6.74% without changing the visible page copy or title of the page.
Another useful resource is the Webconfs keyword cloud tool. A keyword cloud is a visual representation of the keywords that appear on your web page with words appearing in a larger font where there is a higher density. Your leading keyword phrase should ideally appear at the start of the cloud in the largest font. Again, we used the two keyword phrases ‘internet marketing’ and ‘enpiem internet marketing’ from our homepage.
As you can see, the words ‘internet’ and ‘marketing’ are the most prominent with ‘enpiem’ in third position. Stuffing a page with keywords will almost certainly result in you being penalised by the major search engines so using tools like these can be very beneficial when trying to maintain the balance of engaging copy with a clear indication to search engines as to the priority of the page.
Enpiem Internet Marketing provide a full Search Engine Optimisation service including on-page and off-page optimisation, link building and copywriting. Contact us to discuss your requirements.
Tags: Search Marketing, SEO