Improving your keyword density for search engines
I have had many people ask me why one of their articles does not show up in a search. Oftentimes, it is because they don’t use their keywords enough. For example, I knew someone that wrote an article on Aerobee frisbees, yet when I looked at her article I only saw the word Aerobee once. In order to keep the article short, she would just say frisbees, or “it,” or “them.” A couple months later, she emailed me back and said that after the replacing “it” and “them” with Aerobee, her article made the first page.
Introduction to keyword density
A “keyword” is a word that people use to search in a search engine. Generally speaking, keyword density is the ratio of the keyword against the total number of words appearing on your web page. For example, a keyword that occurs only once out of a thousand words has a lower keyword density than a keyword that five times out of a thousand.
One the big difference between normal writing and articles on the internet is that you will use your keywords in places you might not normally. Just try to do your best to make sure that you don’t overload your article with keywords or it will disrupt the flow of your article. And by the way, if you think loading up your keywords will help your ranking, you are wrong. Search engines know the deal and will not display your article if you go way overboard.
Improving your search engine ranking
Follow these steps to improve your keyword density.
- When planning a page, think about which search terms people are likely to use when searching for the information your site provides. For example, a visitor who is looking for information on “How to create an online newsletter” might search for “web site newsletter,” “free newsletter,” “online subscription,” among others.
- Again, don’t simply throw those keywords everywhere on your web page. You won’t trick the search engines.
- Instead, just do what you can to include your keywords as much as feels appropriate.
For instance, if one of your keyword phrases is “search engine ranking”, actually use the phrase “search engine ranking” in your document instead of substituting with words like “it.”
You can see an example of how this is done by examining this article itself, and see how often I have repeated keywords and phrases like “keyword”, “keyword density”, “search engine ranking” and “search engine positioning”.
- Back in the day, some people tried the trick of having a very short page for a particular keyword. For example, the page may only have the following one sentence: “Keyword density is important in search engine ranking.” The page was easy to write, and accomplished the goal of having a good keyword density for “keyword density” and “search engine ranking.” That doesn’t work any more, because search engines place value on site that meet a certain minimum number of words.
Finally
Increasing your keyword density is a simple step to take that can pay big dividends in the long run. Before writing an article, consider all of the possible keywords people might use, and include them as much as you can.
