Some will say that 2% to 8% is the ideal density of keywords

for SEO purposes. Others claim that optimum density for Google

is specifically 2% and that anything higher will result in your

site being penalized. For Yahoo and MSN, they specify a 5%

keyword density. But is it really?

 

In my experience as an SEO writer, most internet marketers

require keyword seeding density at 10% or higher. Now, if

Google, which happens to be the most popular search engine in

the internet, does indeed penalize websites with keywords seeded

at more than 2%, don’t you think that it’s senseless for my

clients to ask for more than 2% seeding?

 

Since Google, Yahoo and MSN began incorporating relevance of

keywords to the actual content into their web crawlers, keyword

density, which was the main focus of web masters at that time,

became a secondary consideration. Unfortunately, some web

masters and internet marketers still stress keyword importance

over content relevance. For example, the words “book”, “car” and

“shopping” are most commonly used in internet searches. If you

had those words in your site, you have a guaranteed hit. This

system would work before. You could use sex as a keyword, but

your website actually contains information about rutabaga

farming.

 

This system of keyword importance and density lead to

misleading search results. Because of the decrease in

serviceability of search engines due to the abusers of the

system, search engine operators decided to add the value of

keyword relevance to actual content to better their service to

internet surfers. So if you are talking about rutabaga farming

and scatter the word sex all throughout your article just to

attract more traffic, the search engine will get confused

because, your keyword does not have any relevance to your

content at all. When this happens, the search engine can ignore

you, penalize you or blacklist your website from its search

index.

 

If you take the time to read newsletters or articles about

keywords today, you will mostly find similar emphasis on keyword

relevance. When you write an article seeded with keywords that

are relevant to your product or idea, you are doing several

things at once. Your first accomplishment is in having a greater

chance of higher search engine result rankings. Because the

search engine understands what your website is all about, it

would not hesitate to churn it out as a search result from a

user query relevant to your keywords. Second, by having relevant

keywords on your site, you get more chances of attracting the

right kind of traffic. Having more relevant website hits gives

you more chances of selling your product because your product is

exactly the reason why the users are directed to your site.

 

Because of the relevance of your article, your ratio of relevant

to irrelevant surfer traffic increases. Third, as a result of

highly relevant keywords and content, the users will find your

website very useful and will most likely decide to mark your

site down for another visit just to find out if they can get

something useful out of it again. Lastly, even though you will

experience a significantly reduced traffic count, you don’t

really lose anything since most searchers tend to get annoyed

when they are re-directed to a website that doesn’t contain

anything related to their search. You increase and enhance the

usefulness and reputation of your site without having to resort

to dirty, misleading tactics for traffic generation.

 

To your success,

Murray

 

P.S. I cannot stress enough how important relevance of keyword

to content is. The importance of this value reflects on the

search engines need to classify websites according to their

content. If your keywords don’t match your content, your website

will be ignored by the search engine.