SEO is a famous term among webmasters, but the implementation of Search Engine Optimization is still least. Yesterday, I came across some web designers-web owners who have been working in this field of web and graphic design since 2003, but what surprised me was they are aware of SEO—the term—but the meaning is still vague to them and SEO implementation is out of the question.

Well, it is not a surprising story because there are many web designers and some are professional, who hardly cares what SEO really stands for. However, I drew some odd faces of SEO for them and they were even more surprise to know the correlation of SEO and Web design.

Thus, in this post, I thought of looking back to some SEO basic, but what really made me write on keyword density and its prominence is when I found on my blog analytics, that someone reached to my blog and left out because he/she was looking for some valuable contents on “method of calculation of keyword density”. Hence, to avoid such things to happen in future and add some basic of SEO to web designers and content writers, I clarify everything here:

• Keyword Density:

One effective and must do SEO optimization on your content is the optimization of your keyword density. In simple words, keyword density is the percentage calculation of your keywords and key-phrases in relation to the volume of your content. In addition, this is one strong clue for Google and search engines to determine the theme of your website. Search engines are human made robots and they cannot read and perceive like human mind. However, these robots are calculative and such calculations help search engines to classify web contents and its theme for proper indexing process.

Keyword Density Calculation:

Let us suppose, an article on Data Recovery is of 1200 words and data recovery is the keyword that is repeated for 64 times in the entire article. Now, search engines simply determine this by performing following calculation:

Keyword Density = Keyword/ Number of words in Content × 100%

I.e. 64 / 1200 × 100% = 5.3333% Keep your keyword density from 3-6 percent.

Hence, in your entire content the keyword density of “Data Recovery” is 5.3333%

Now, if your keyword density is not well optimized in your content than the horrible situation comes when you write an article on Data Recovery, but you replace the keyword using pronouns often. In such case, the Google finds those particular words that been frequently used in the entire article and suppose it as the keyword. For instance, if the word “Suppose” is highly used than “Data Recovery” search engines are more likely to assume the keyword of the content to be “Suppose”. However, it doesn’t necessarily assumes the entire website working on the keyword “Suppose” because it crawls other essential part of your website like title tag, keyword tag etc, but it is sure that your content won’t appear when anyone use the keyword “Data Recovery” in Google. Thus, maintaining healthy keyword density in your content is very crucial for better visibility in search engines.

• Keyword Prominence:

Keyword prominence is another important factor in your webpage that helps gaining better visibility in SERP and placement. Keyword prominence is the particular keyword that webmaster and search engine optimizers have given proper attention by implementing them in their title tag, headers, beginning of the paragraph and hyperlinks. These are the important SEO gauge of your website and Google highly depends on these factors to determine the theme of your website.

For instance, if you use the word “Data Recovery” effectively in the title tag, headings and in the beginning of the visible text than you are simply conveying search engines a message that the word used “Data Recovery” is the keyword you are optimizing for. Hence, placing keywords on such parts of your web page should be done wisely.

Furthermore, there are webmasters who knows the impact of keyword prominence in their website, but even after successful implementation, they find low visibility of their page in SERP. For them, I would like to suggest, avoid diluting the keyword prominence by simply tightening their keywords. For example: rather than using “Effective Tips on Data Recovery” you can simply use “Data Recovery Tips” if their keyword is “Data Recovery Tips”.

• Keyword Proximity:

Keyword proximity is the key addition to SEO optimization and is equally important for effective on-page SEO. Keyword proximity is the close relevance of those keywords that your searchers are more likely to use in search engines. If the majority is of the searchers use “Blog Submission Directory” to find your website than to appear in a better place of your SERP it is very crucial to optimize your web page and content by using such keywords so that there remains nothing to confuse the search engines. For instance, if your searchers use “Blog Submission Directory” for the search and you are using “Great Directory Submission” than you are likely to get behind in SERP.

• Keyword Frequency:

The concept of keyword frequency is closely related to the theory of keyword density. Your keyword frequency is the weighing of the keyword visibility in your webpage’s specific parts. In keyword frequency, search engines determine the number of times your keyword has appeared in the page and weighs it according to the specific areas of its emergence. However, it does not calculate your keywords as it does with the keyword density. Hence, if your keyword has appeared 64 times in your content than search engines count the keyword frequency as 64 times.

Nevertheless, it is very important for webmasters to understand that implementing high frequency or even the density of your keywords leads to keyword stuffing that is equivalent to spam creating. Thus, search engines are more likely to penalize your website for such act.

Similarly, it is also crucial to make your keyword appear in the important parts of your content. Google and search engines generally reads first 200 hundred lines of your content and not all to determine the page theme. Hence, it is highly suggested to use your major keywords in an organic way in the first 200 lines. However, it does not mean to exclude keywords after 200 lines.

Author: Kiran Bista.                                                                                                                                                                           Image Source: I