The Myth of Keyword Density

So there you are.

Writing articles and content for your website just as you should be, trying to follow all of the "rules", getting your keyword in your title tag, using relevant text within the article, and just generally following whatever Mr. X says in the search engine forum that you follow.

He says he gets thousands of visitors a day to his website so you should too right?

He also says that you should have a keyword density of 8% within your article. Depending on who you listen to, the figures may be 2% or as high as 12%.

So what do you do? Do you optimize for 2% or 12% or somewhere in-between? Mr. X does 8% so let's go with that.

After all, if you are writing a 400 word article, then even at 2% your keyword should show up 8 times. I guess that's not so bad. But what about those folks using 8, 10 and even 12%? In a 400 word article, that's a whopping 48 times!

Can you imagine how that would read? Who in their right mind is going to think that an article with the same word in it 48 times was written by an even remotely intelligent person?

But don't just listen to me, go to your favorite search engine and do a search on your keyword, click on the result that shows up first and read their article.

Does it read like it has keywords all over it? You know, because keyword density is so important for your keyword page ranking? And keywords are what makes you get into the number one position at search engine x for your keyword? You get my point.

Chances are the results that come up in the 1, 2, 3 and even 20th position are actually well-written, entertaining and informative articles. Articles that people would actually want to read no less! So now that you've been convinced that there is no secret formula for keyword density how do you write your articles?

I know this is going to sound off the wall and you might think I'm a little crazy (then again you were about to write an article with a keyword density of 8%) but the secret is to write your content for your audience. However, do keep your keyword in mind as you are writing.

There are certain words that naturally flow with each other. I promise you that your particular keyword will have complimentary words that you can use to help the search engines understand what your article is about while still giving your site visitor a good reading experience (and you won't sound like a dork in the process).

One great way to discover these keywords is to use Wordtracker but not in the same way you might think.

I'll only touch on this briefly so that you can get to work because as soon as I tell you this you'll want to rush right over to Wordtracker and get this list.

If you're at all familiar with Wordtracker, you know that if you click on keyword universe and do a search on your keyword that a whole list of related keywords will show up in that left pane.

So many people completely ignore this list yet it is one of the most important lists you could ever see. All of these words (you'll have some anomalies of course) will be related in some way shape or form to your keyword.

Excited yet? You should be.

You now have a list of words that you can use within your article that will help it be more readable to your site visitors while still letting the search engines know what your article is about.

Author Bio-

Kristine Wirth is a partner in the Work at Home Mom Website http://www.Be-a-WAHM.com whose purpose is to show other parents how to work from home and build a successful business online. Kristine is also an SEO expert who specializes in keywords and marketing techniques. Kristine is also a WAHM herself. She has two boys, one who is already in college and another who is a very busy toddler.





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