Remember that the goal of the search engines is to report back to the user the most relevant response to their query.  So we would humbly submit that if your content doesn’t make the cut, it doesn’t deserve it.  On the other hand, we also feel that increasing your awareness that using pronouns or acronyms to refer to your main topic dooms you to page 9999 in the search engines if that phrase only shows up one time (as searched) on the page.  To that end the keyword density analyzer is great to create content topic transparency.

 

For example, in the phrase:

 

Schipul – The Web Marketing Company

 

The two word phrase “web marketing” represents 2 of 5 words or 40% of the text.  That is far too dense and if that was the only text on the page you would look like a spammer (someone who cheats in the search engines is called a spammer – yuck).  But if that is the name of the company and it is included with other relevant text, perhaps with a density of 5 to 10% at a maximum, you will be fine.

 

The results from the keyword density analyzer show one to three columns depending on the one being used.  They show the density of that phrase as a percentage of total text.  The more advanced analyzers omit “stop words” - words like “and” and “the” that the search engines typically ignore. 

 

The results look similar to this three word pair example from abcnews.com

 

3 Word Phrases: 21
Occurrences : 46
Count	Word	Density
4	complete list scroll	8.7%
4	view complete list	8.7%
2	airline calendar girls	4.35%
2	cancer survivors problems	4.35%
2	child cancer survivors	4.35%
2	ghraib abuse counts	4.35%
2	good morning america	4.35%
2	guides stroke patients	4.35%
2	guilty ghraib abuse	4.35%
2	harman guilty ghraib	4.35%
2	hurricane season predicted	4.35%
2	iraqis killed bodies	4.35%
2	latest market details	4.35%
2	magazine deadly mistake	4.35%
2	newsweek retracts story	4.35%
2	retracts story quran	4.35%
2	robot guides stroke	4.35%
2	story quran abuse	4.35%
2	stroke patients recovery	4.35%
2	subscribe alerts subscribe	4.35%
2	white house warning	4.35%

 

This is a snapshot from www.abcnews.com taken in May of 2005.  My bet is the executives at ABC don’t realize that they are using poor communication skills and have made the three word phrase “scroll complete list” the most popular term on the page.  OK, that may not seem fair, but search engines are just programs and they can only work with what they are given.  If you tell them that your site is about list scrolling then what exactly are they supposed to do?

 

To close out the discussion of keyword density, your goal is a healthy balance that reflects the value of your content.  Remember that white text on a white background to get a 99% density for your target term does NOT work.  And even if it did it wouldn’t be right.  Don’t obsess about keyword density.  Do check the quality of your writing with this tool.