What’s the Right Keyword Density?
Keyword density is hard to quantify. It’s a measurement of the number of times that your keywords
appear on the page, versus the number of words on a page — a ratio, in other words. So if you have a
single web page that has 1,000 words of text and your keyword appears on that page 10 times (assum-
ing a single keyword, not a keyword phrase), then your keyword density is 1 percent.What’s the right keyword density? That’s a question that no one has been able to answer definitively.
Some experts say that your keyword density should be around five to seven percent, and others sug-
gest that it should be a higher or lower percentage. But no one seems to agree on exactly where it
should be.Because there’s no hard and fast rule, or even a good rule of thumb, to dictate keyword density, site
owners are flying on their own. What is certain is that using a keyword or set of keywords or phrases
too often begins to look like keyword stuffingto a search engine, and that can negatively impact the
ranking of your site.See, there you are. Not enough keyword density and your site ranking suffers. Too much keyword
density and your site ranking suffers. But you can at least find out what keyword density your com-
petition is using by looking at the source code for their pages.Looking at your competition’s source code is also a good way to find out whichkey-
words they’re using. The listed keywords should appear in the first few lines of code
(indicated in Figures 4-3 and 4-5).To view the source code of a page if you’re using Internet Explorer, follow these steps:- Open Internet Explorer and navigate to the page for which you would like to view the
source code. - Click Viewin the standard toolbar. (In Internet Explorer 7.0, select Page.) The View (or
Page) menu appears, as shown in Figure 4-2.
FIGURE 4-2
Use the Page menu in Internet Explorer 7.0 to view the source code for the displayed web site.TIPTIP
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