If you are wondering what keyword density is, how to calculate it and what the optimal values are for a page, continue reading and find out how to leverage keyword density to improve your site’s optimization.

What is keyword density and how to calculate it
Keyword density is a value that indicates how many times a keyword is used, including semantics, within text on a page of a site.

To calculate this value, one must divide the number of times the keyword was used by the total number of words included in the text and multiply by one hundred.

Why is keyword density so important?
Keyword density holds a fundamental importance in achieving good organic positioning: in fact, it can affect the site’s SERP ranking and consequently the number of visits it can get.

We understand why it is so important to always take keyword density into consideration.

Whenever we search for information on the Internet, the search engine provides answers after checking the keywords and lists them in the SERP, based on the level of relevance to the query entered. Google, therefore, creates indexes for each keyword based on the user’s geolocation and previous searches.

One can understand, then, why keyword density is so important: it is necessary to determine the consistency of the page to the user’s query.

In fact, Google uses automated software to check content on the web (crawlers or spiders) that are able to identify keywords through the analysis of title tags, meta description and alt text.

Then Google will form lists with the information it has obtained so that it has it ready in the moment to organize it in order in the SERP according to the user’s search.

This is why a proper keyword density value is necessary: better site ranking translates into more visits to the site and more leads.

Keyword density in Google’s algorithm
In the course of the evolution of Google’s ranking algorithm, a number of SEO techniques arose that managed to change the ranking on the SERP in a way that was not entirely clear: the so-called black hats (to relate back to the imagery of Western movies in which the villains often wore a black hat).

To curb this phenomenon in 2011, Google released a change in its ranking algorithm, Panda Update, which eliminates from the SERP those sites that repeat keywords often in order to achieve rankings that increase site traffic but contribute content of little value.

Panda Update thus penalized the unnatural use of keywords within text, i.e., keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing means “keyword stuffing”-it is a technique of overusing keywords in a text to get better rankings in SERPs. With the introduction of Panda Update, this behavior has become a penalizing behavior. Excessive use of keywords makes the reading of a text less fluent and therefore the user will easily abandon the site, consequently harming the search engine as well.

Is there an optimal keyword density?
While there are no specific studies on the subject or guidelines provided by Google, thanks to the Panda update it is possible to derive some indications of the best percentages. Of course, one can rely on common sense: it is important to avoid keyword stuffing, but also to place keywords in specific places such as the title tag, in headings, URLs, meta descriptions, ALT attributes for images.

It is also useful to use the long tail theory of choosing generic keywords that allow you to respond to a larger number of searches in order to improve your ranking.

Very important is to create text that is easy and pleasant to read and has interesting content that manages to entice the reader to spend more time on the page.

Measure keyword density through online tools.
To make sure you are achieving a useful percentage of keyword density, you can resort to using check tools.

A good help can come from the online checker tool and keyword density generator, available free online.

They work in much the same way: you can enter the URL if the text has already been published, or portions of the text that you have started to produce.

Other tools you can use are:

• Text analyzer from Online-Utility.org: in addition to providing the number of characters, words and phrases, it also provides the density of the text analyzed;
  • keyword density checker from Small SEO Tools: gives the ability to indicate the keywords that you need to analyze. In the results it will indicate the keywords and their frequency of use.