How important is keyword density?

Not very, it would seem.

In the past the keywords density of a page has been considered one of the main factors in the way the search engines measure relevance. I’m sure at times it has been a factor in measuring the relevance of of a document but i’m starting to see it’s decline in the current climate. With the vast amount of data that Google has gathered over the past years and it’s ever growing understanding and application of semantics, keyword density has become almost pointless.

So why has it changed?

The search engines understand that the higher keyword density a document has the more illegible it becomes. A lot of SEO’s will know this through hours in the past spent trying to fit the keyword in as many times as possible throughout a document without sounding like a pigeon-english translation, and for many of you, the decline of keyword density will probably be welcomed with open arms But without keyword density the relevance of a document still needs to be measured and this is where the use of semantics comes into play.

Way back in 2003 Google aquired a company called Applied Semantics. The company specialises in natural language processing and extracts information from websites in a way that mimics human users ans this is the base on which the new way a measuring relevancy has arisen. The vast amount of information that Google has aquired through indexing billions of web pages has provided them with probably the largest and most indepth data on the way language is used ever compliled.

What does this mean for the keywords then?

To make your page stand out as relevant to the search engines you need to be including not only your keyword, but also sematically related words. Google can see from its information what other words are related to the keywords the page is focused around and assumes that these should naturally occur throughout the page. If they don’t then something smells fishy. Making sure that your keywords are sematically related not only has the effect of powering your relevance to the main keyword, but can also help boost you for the other keywords. This gives you cover over the niche phrases and increases the chances that a long tail search will result in your website ranking.

How to find the right words.

There are a lot of ways to find sematically related keywords, just type synonyms or lexical dictionary into Google, but my preferred way is to use Google’s new tool the wonder wheel. You may not have heard of it, it hasn’t been overly publicised as I would have thought a tool like this would. To get to it just type your main keyword into Google. When the results page turns up, look for a link saying “Show options…” in the blue bar just below the search box. Once you click this you should see an option down the left hand side saying “wonder wheel”. In this example I have used the keyword “chairs”. The wonder wheel has brought up numerous suggestions for related terms for chairs and I decide that “modern chairs” best fits my product. This the leads me to the surrounding keywords which Google has deemed semantically related to my website. Bear in mind that these keywords should only be used if they are actually relevant to your website and you would benefit from ranking for the terms.

If the wonderwheel isn’t your thing check out www.thesaurus.com, it’s easier but you can’t gurantee that the words the thesaurus thinks are related are the same as Google’s.

The application of these words should make including content on the page easier and should hopefully broaden the spectrum of results for the website.

Hopefully this has cleared things up about keyword density and made semantics a little easier to deal with

If there’s anything missed drop it in the comments.

Did you know that when you link to one of my posts I aim to provide a search engine friendly, contextual link back to your website where possible? Also after a couple of relevant comments your links will be approved as dofollowed. Why wait to get involved?