Keywords 101

There was a time when online website owners optimized their websites based soley on keyword density. Keyword density used to be the standard by which all websites were measured by the search engines. Now the trend has changed. The search engines take into account several different factors when judging the value of a website and deciding how and where it should (or shouldn't) be ranked. Now things have changed. There are the ever-changing algorithms, the PageRank system (Google) and an increasing importance is being placed on off-page ranking factors.

Keyword density is still important, it's just that its importance is not a great as it once was. Website owners, however still continue to struggle with this concept. What is the proper keyword density percentage for an average webpage? Generally, you should aim for a keyword density percentage from 2%-8%. What is keyword density and how is it measured? Let's consider the following:

1. Keyword density is a measurement of the number of times a keyword appears in content

2. Keyword Density = number of times a keyword is used divided by the number of words on the page

Simple, isn't it?

The search engines decreased the importance of keyword density because this is the one on-page optimization factor that is very easy to manipulate. In short, spammers abused the system, and it became more difficult for the search engines to separate useful content from the spammers.

Keyword Relevancy

Since the search engines decreased keyword density as an SEO factor, it has been replaced by keyword relevancy. Keyword relevancy takes into account how well related your keywords are to the content on your individual webpages. Thus, your title, keyword and description META tags work together with your content to produce your keyword relevancy. There are free tools on the Internet that will allow you to measure your keyword relevancy. Once that is taken care of, you rankings, including PageRank, should get better.

Along with keyword density, which is still important, you should focus on:

* Content, Content, Content (useful content) * Keyword relevance

Once you have on-page optimization taken care of, move on to the next step, off-page optimization techniques.

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