How to Calculate Keyword Density

To get a higher search engine ranking, you will need to know how to calculate keyword density. In a nutshell, keywords are words or phrases (“long tail keywords”) that Internet users will use to find information. When you fill your site with information that your target audience finds useful and interesting that includes relevant keywords, you will attract organic traffic to it. (Organic traffic comes from search engine results, as opposed to pay-per-click advertising.)

It’s not a good idea to fill your site with pages of keywords that don’t make sense to human web surfers. The idea of having a web site is to draw traffic to it and have your site visitors spend time on your site, bookmark it or sign up for your mailing list, and eventually buy your product or service. When you put material on your site that doesn’t add to your site’s value, your search engine ranking may suffer as well.

Keep in mind that most web surfers will not search through several pages of results before they find the information they need. While being in the first three pages of results for your keywords is good, being in the Top 10 is what you want to strive for.

Here is a formula you can use to calculate keyword density for your content:

Take the total number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears on the page and divide it by the total number of words on the page. Then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Let’s say you have a 500-article and your keyword phrase appears 8 times.

8/500 = 0.016

0.016 x 100 = 1.6 percent keyword density.

Many web site owners want to have between 1.5 and 2.0 percent keyword density for their content. Trying to stuff the content with a high keyword density means that you run the risk of having your content look “spammy,” and that is something you want to avoid.