Keyword density - How much?

[nick]

How much keyword density you maintain on your pages to get some on page optimization.

I had experimented with different densities.

At 1.5% to 2% it didn't got much response.

3.5% to 5% got good results.

7% to 10% this didn't got any thing. [Maybe red flagged]

10% above - Banned from the index. :crying:

If you have done some SEO for your site and would share some experience with me It would be very kind of you. Because I don't want to mess around with more of my domains getting banned from the index to get the data about the keyword density on the pages and its effect.

 

[jignesh]

Usually i go for 6 to 8% but there is one conflict with your view.
see if my targeted keywords is weight loss than i will put the density near 6-8 % but there is a chances of increase density of weight keywords more than 10% than what do u think it will harm the site or not?

 

[Randall]

My opinion is to go with 4% or more to kill the competition and less then 7% to 8% to be in the line.

Had learnt it the hard way. :grin:

Got one site completely out of index but I got my senses back in time and corrected it.

But that is how we learn. [Atleast that is how I had learnt]

 

[nielsencl]

I never worry about percentages. It would be interesting to see what they are, but I always like to keep things simple. I may lose some advantages that could be gained, but I always (almost) stay out of trouble.

What I do is just take the results of my keyword research and use as many things as possible on the entire site. Yes, I use every single variation of my keyword phrases as much as I can. But the thing that controls this is that it must all be good English usage. You can get away with a certain amount of using keyword phrases more than you normally would in copywriting, but at some point it starts sounding bad and you have to stop.

The other thing that I do, and this kind of a secret, is that I "merge" keyword phrases as much as possible. Say my keyword list is this:

phone card,63071
prepaid phone card,10300
international phone card,9345
online phone card,2472
india phone card,1627
cheap phone card,1510
free phone card,1199
phone calling card,1082
cheap international phone card,665
prepaid cell phone card,556
pre paid phone card,377
international prepaid phone card,356
buy phone card,338

If I use "international prepaid phone card" it includes all of the following phrases:

phone card,63071
prepaid phone card,10300
international phone card,9345

True, the last one is a weaker match because of the word "prepaid" between the others, but it can still turn up in searches. If I need to, I will re-arrange the word order of a phase to make it fit in a sentence.

As most of you know, my SEO work is unusual in that I don't worry about rankings, only qualified traffic. I aim for all the strange stuff that people type in and not the top keyword phrases with the most traffic. It is much less work and still provides good results for me.

 

[copper]

I try to start working with low ovt keywords first and go up the list.

Lowest being brazil phone card with 134 and highest "phone card" with 63071.
I don't start with neither.
I start from bottom to top with below list.

1305 discover credit card phone number
1199 free phone card
1150 sim card cell phone
1082 phone calling card
1038 cell phone calling card

I never start with highest ovt keywords because there just will be too manycompetitions.
Many will be really top notch SEO pages to get good listings with such keywords.

Keywords with much less ovt, people tend to overlook, so, much easier to get good listing with such keywords.

SEO specialists like to call this strategy "picking low hanging fruits"

 

[nick]

One more thing. Lets say I write an article and maintain a good keyword density in it.

But when I post them on the forums or any article sites then wouldn't the other content like the menu of that page, the links and other common stuff on that page decrease the density of that keyword on that page?

What are your ideas on this one.

Shouldn't we write the article with a little bit more density then it is needed to keep up with this factors that come into consideration when the article is really posted.

 

[nielsencl]

If you are going to worry about density, then perhaps this should be a consideration. But it may be that density is also looked at from proximity, and not just total page density. I only mention this becuase if I were programming a search engine to find spam, I would look for groups or like keywords, and not just total page density.

If you just keep it good English (or other language) usage, you should be fine. If you don't, then it may discourage visitors.

 

[AMG]

I stay aroung 2%, but I add other versions of the word and other similar words. Looks more natural and is easyer to read.

 

[nick]

That is a good technique.

Something related to LSI. Right.