The Keyword Density Myth

The final objective of search engines is to “answer” or provide information to the user query, since returning irrelevant results would make Google quite unpopular. On the contrary, Google update their algorithms continuously so based on their interpretation they continue to return quality results.

When Google goes through the billions of webpages found on the Web, they undergo a process of indexing. Basically, Google picks up the content and text inside every webpage and forms an index. Similar to an index at the back of the book, Google creates a massive index for the Web. In this way, search engines know the list of webpages that a particular keyword appears in. Thus, for a user query search engines can then match the search with their index to return relevant webpages. More ‘relevancy’ to the webpage can be added by inserting more occurrences of a particular keyword. So if keywords are repeated within the content you can now assume that the ranking of a webpage would increase. On the contrary, focusing on keyword density and stuffing may bring a website’s rankings down. The keyword density obsession started by striving for an ideal percentage of repetition of a keyword on a webpage. In this manner, search engines perceived the content as being more relevant and rank it higher up.

This old practice to increase ranking of a particular webpage by stuffing keywords in a webpage has been overly used. Search engines have reduced this signal as it has been abused and they have moved forward as they update their algorithms. Search engine algorithms have become more complex and they now have the capability to better ‘understand’ the content. Search engines can identify an article which is relevant and covers a wider angle of the topic being discussed. So what one must keep in mind when writing the content for a website?

When writing content for a webpage on a particular topic, the content must cover the topic in detail; it must also be relevant and maps the scope for that particular webpage. When writing the content, the copywriter must not write for search engines but for users. Writing for search engines will mislead the copywriter and produce content of less quality, that is, text that when read will sound absurd and with wrong use of words. Search engines have changed; nowadays, a search engine can dutifully analyse and interpret this content as being of low value. Quality is now a serious characteristic that content must have. This will make it stand out and fulfil its scope to inform or engage the readers.

Nonetheless, since keywords still play an important role in ranking, the copywriter must make sure to include a couple of occurrences in the text. These need to be included naturally and the sequence of keywords in a phrase does not really need to be emphasised. The content body must build the topic being discussed in a structured manner making use of titles and paragraphs. Inserting synonyms or related phrases will also help increase the relevancy of the content, not only for search engines but including related phrases or synonymous will normally result in more in-depth content. It is worth to mention that the relevancy of a webpage is not only based on the contents of the webpage but also on the links pointing to that webpage. Search engines also consider the anchor text of a particular link which is the linking text, to assess further the relevancy of a webpage. In fact this is one of the most significant ranking factors.

Conrad Bugeja is a Search Optimisation Consultant and Pay-Per-Click Consultant at Alert eBusiness Internet Marketing Division - www.alertemarketing.com