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Why, what and how to use keyword density
Let's talk about SEO first and what it does. If you type a search in google, yahoo, MSN or any other major search engine, there are likely to be thousands or hundreds of thousands of results in the search engine. So let's imagine you sell ceramic dolls on your website. Now someone types "ceramic dolls" into a search engine, where in those thousands of results does your website fall? Is your website ranked on the first page? If you are like most websites, your ranking is probably somewhere in the depths of results that exceed 1,000. Imagine that a customer searches for what he sells, but cannot find his business. Do you really think someone will examine the first 1,000 results to find yours?
Search engine optimization (SEO) simply means that you will employ methods that will upload your website to search engine results for "ceramic dolls" or your own personal keywords. Research and common sense tell us that if a potential website visitor / customer does not find your website within the first 20 results, he or she will either go ahead and try a new search or simply use one of the first 20 websites that has found. This is where keyword density comes into play.
In past years I can remember finding web pages that had hundreds of words at the bottom of the page, this was common practice. The reason for this was for search engines to place this website on the results page if an internet user enters any of those hundreds of words. Times have changed and so have search engines. Today, search engines are much more sophisticated in how they rank websites to include in their results.
Keyword articles (which adhere to certain keyword densities) dramatically improve a website's SEO ranking. Going back to our example of ceramic dolls, this site would want a keyword article written with the keywords "ceramic dolls" inside the article. In this way, when a web user enters "ceramic dolls", the site will appear much higher in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Search engines use certain algorithms that "read" these keywords to the surfer. If you go and type any phrase into a search engine, you will notice that the results show those keywords highlighted in bold. They show you how keywords are listed on those web pages. Placing articles on your website that contain the keywords your customers are looking for will help your search engine rank these specific keywords.
Now, you can't just write the "ceramic dolls" over and over on the same web page. With today's search engine sophistication, doing so would really hurt your search engine rankings. You must provide articles that not only contain the keywords, but also articles that also contain relevant information.
There's a big debate over what density to use in a keyword article. Suppose you want a 500-word article written about ceramic dolls. What percentage of the time (density) should the phrase "ceramic dolls" be used? Should it be there 4% (20 times) of the time, 7% or 12%? You should be careful because using keywords too often hurts your ranking, while using too little doesn't improve your ranking enough. So what is the answer? The answer is that only those who develop algorithms for search engine companies really know ......... and are not talking. Most people use between 3% and 15% keyword density. Some people believe that having the key phrase in the title and as the first word of each paragraph helps. Some believe that using "ceramic dolls" 18 times and "ceramic dolls" 2 times in a 500 word article with a density of 4% will work.
This is what everyone knows, if you are not using keyword rich articles on your website (regardless of the density you choose), you will not be very well ranked in any of the search engines. Keyword rich articles are one of the best ways to advertise.
