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Keyword Frequency

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Website Promotion Basics 3
Keyword Placement, Frequency, Density and Prominence

18th June 2007

There are many ways to help people to find your website. Using the search engines can be one of the best - not least because you can do it for free! Key to this is the use of keywords (see previous article).

• Keyword Frequency and Density. Keyword frequency - the number of times it appears in the page - is important. The more times a word or phrase appears the greater weight the search engine is likely to give it. But only up to a point - since keyword density - that is the number of occurrences relative to the number of the other relevant words on the page must also be considered. Get the density too low and your keyword might not be considered sufficiently important. Too high and your page could be 'penalised' for keyword 'stuffing'.
  
  So what is the 'correct' density? Well that's the hard part since this is the kind of info the SE's tend to keep to themselves. It can also vary between search engines. You often have to make an informed guess. You can read up on what the 'experts' say then pick a number. The sages often seem to recommend a keyword density of between 2% and 8%. You can get software, free and paid, to help you calculate this. You can also pay for advice as to what density would be regarded as most desirable by any particular search engine. If you can't find a better number then you could try aiming for a density of, say, 5% or so for your main keyword and a little less for the others.
  
  You could try optimising your web page for one particular keyword or phrase (of two or three words) or you could optimise for two or three keywords or phrases.
  
  
• Keyword Prominence. Not only should you consider the frequency and density of your keywords you should also consider their placement within the page. They should appear in the main content of the page, of course, but try to ensure that they are well represented towards the beginning of the content, in the first few lines or the first paragraph. Appearing at least once towards the end might also help. It might also help to place your keywords closer to the the beginning of a sentence, paragraph or title than to the end.
  
  Use your keywords in the title and description of your page and in your headings.
  
  
• Images. Search engine spiders and robots read text, they cannot read images but they can read the 'alt' text associated with them.
  
  
• Which Engine? Different search engines can have different 'rules' and preferences. So what might be considered an ideal optimisation of keywords for one might not work as well for another. You can choose between optimising for a particular engine or optimising for search engines in general.
  
  
• Keep it readable. Try not to get carried away with doing what might help the search engine robots to the detriment of your human visitors. In the end you need to keep your content readable and appealing.
  
  

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© Trevor Womack 2007