Keyword Density
Keyword density, also called keyword density, refers to the percentage of a keyword in the text (number of words in the text). Keyword density is a ranking factor, albeit a rather small one.
What is the perfect keyword density?
A value between 3-4 % is generally considered good. One should not be stingy with the use of keywords, but the relevance, meaningfulness and readability of the text should not be negatively affected. The use of keywords should be done in a natural way from the context of the text.
What does keyword stuffing mean?
Keyword stuffing is the excessive use of a keyword in website texts. The goal of this measure is to convince the search engines of the relevance of the text. Since the Google Panda update, however, keyword stuffing has a rather negative effect and is punished by the search engine with ranking losses.
Nevertheless, some website operators get the idea to disfigure the text with the excessive use of a keyword during the creation of the content in such a way that they can hardly be considered relevant and meaningful by the bots.
An extreme example of keyword stuffing is the following sentence around the keyword "house". "My house, which became my grandma's house, is very similar to my friend's house, who had inherited this house from her grandpa, who in turn had built this house as a home for his wife." In such cases, the search engine algorithm recognizes that this text block is complete nonsense and is just an attempt at keyword stuffing. If you are classified as keyword stuffing, you run the risk of being penalized by the search engines with a loss of ranking.
In addition, excessive use has no added value for the reader or is ignored by search engines such as Google.
Matt Cutts of Google has this to say:
"If you use a relevant keyword once or twice, of course it helps the site to be eligible for rankings in the first place for that exact keyword. But just because you use it seven or eight more times, that doesn't have a positive effect. (...) Think about the keywords you want your text to rank for and try to incorporate those keywords into your text in a natural way. (...) Make sure you use the right keywords and the text reads naturally, then you're on the safe side."
What is the importance of keyword density for search engine optimization (SEO)?
Content is king! And that's what all content marketing is based on.
But what does this mean for the content of the text or for the keyword density in search engine optimization? As long as the content is polished and relevant to the topic, it is no problem for Google and Co. if the keyword is used frequently. It even rewards good content with better ranking positions. How can you tell that you have high-quality content?
The quality of content can be measured by the length of time a user spends on a particular page. This key figure is an important indication of good content. If there are also valuable backlinks pointing to this page, it will also be classified as valuable by search engines.
Conclusion:
The content strategy should focus on letting the content text emerge in a natural way. Here it is also quite okay if the keyword occurs several times. As long as the text reads pleasantly and is easy to understand, the keyword fits well into the page. Then a somewhat higher keyword density is also okay.
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