Keyword Density – what is it and how to check it.

In general I try to write my posts so anyone can understand what I’m talking about, whether or not they’ve spent 10 years doing SEO. I believe I succeed quite well, but sometimes I don’t.

I recently wrote a post about On Site Optimization and included a brief mention of checking your keyword density.

This might have gone over a few people’s heads, and even if it didn’t, you might not know how to check your keyword density.

Keyword Density basically means the amount of times a word, or word phrase appears on a page. Simple enough.

So how do you check keyword density?

There are a hundred tools out there that will help you out. I’m going to go through a fast but detailed tutorial on how to use just one.

The main keyword density tool that I like to use is SEOQuake Add-on for Firefox. (they also have an add-on for Chrome)
The add-on has a ton of information about SEO in general, but it can be overwhelming and slow your browsing experience down.

First we’ll install seo quake and disable most of the features:
In FireFox go to: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3036/
Click the Green button – add to firefox
Install the add on and restart Firefox. During install it will ask if you want instant reports or on demand. change to on demand, you don’t want it looking up every site you visit, it will slow you down too much.
After you restart you will have a small “SQ” in the bottom right of your browser.
Click it once and it will turn gray.

You now turned off all the annoying things with this pluggin that you don’t need right now.

Browse to a site you want to check
I’ll check my on site optimization article:
Right click on an empty are, select SEOQuake, select Keyword Density.

once you select keyword density report it will open in a new tab with all kinds of wonderful information.

You can see my top words for this page are: optimization, search, seo, site, engine, tips

That is right in line with my overall keyword strategy and I’m pretty happy with it. You can also look lower down and see what your 2, 3 and 4 word phrases are.

My top phrases, again right in line with my keyword strategies:
search engine, engine optimization, on site, site optimization, learning center, contact me, seo tips
search engine optimization, on site optimization
marketing tips seo tips, tips seo tips website, seo tips website tips, of search engine optimization

How important is my keyword density?

It’s minor. Keyword density isn’t going to get you to the top of the search engines, but it will give a slight edge when fighting for a particular spot.

You shouldn’t kill yourself trying to get the right recipe of keyword density percentages. Try to write naturally for humans. Then after you finish writing your article check the density and try to improve what you can. I’ve often used keyword density tools to find accidental omissions of words from my keyword research list.

How do I increase my density for my product?
easy – use the words more.

One way to easily and quickly increase your keyword count it to look through your paragraphs for use of pronouns. Replacing pronouns with the proper noun can naturally increase your word counts and not read like it was written in some other language and then translated poorly.

Let me know if you find this article useful and if there is anything you’d like more information on.