Is Keyword Density Important for SEO?

Keyword Density Versus Keyword Quality

Keyword Density is often a hot topic among SEO mavens. Many will say that keyword density is very important but not to exceed a certain number of your page theme keywords in the body of your content. Most agree that 6% is the maximum. Others will say that page theme keywords have little to do with SEO. The same non-believers of keyword density profess that Title Tags, Heading Tags, and Anchor Text of Inbound Links are all that matters.

The problem with the opinions of most of these mavens is that they have a short history of real practice and/or their knowledge is based upon short cycle testing.

To put a cap on the subject we decided to combine our 17 years of experience with a real test and analysis of 16 like and similar websites all launched at the same time to test the theories of keyword density, relevance, and quality. Home remodeling or home improvement were the given website themes.

To begin, 8 websites with a home remodeling theme were launched with a keyword density of roughly 4-6 %. Then 8 additional websites were launched with no keyword density in mind when writing the content. All 16 sites were launched in 16 different cities around the USA. All page titles and heading tags were identical. In addition, 20 inbound links were provided with the same anchor text to each site. We paid close attention with theme to insure that the normally associated keywords (LSI) were present in average quantity and structure for all web sites.

The results? The sites with 4-6% keyword density ranked above the non-keyword density sites by an average of a full search engine result page. In other words, the heavier keyword density sites averaged a rank of 7 after 3 weeks while the non-keyword sites ranked around 15-17 or higher. So does this mean that density matters?

So to prove this theory we decided to change up some of the keywords. The original test used "home remodeling" as the keyword theme. What if we added or used another commonly used keyword by searchers to find the same theme result? To create another test we added and changing out "home remodeling" for "home improvement." However, beforehand we logged the rankings of both "home remodeling" and "home improvement." We had almost no listings for "home improvement."

To begin, we elevated all 16 site keyword density themes to 4-6%. We switched out 8 of the sites completely from "home remodeling" to "home improvement." For the remainder of 8 sites we balanced the keyword theme equally with both "home remodeling" and 'home improvement" thereby lowering the keyword density for either keywords to 2-3%. We also added inbound links for "home improvement" but left in-place the inbound links for "home remodeling"

The results? Within 3 weeks the 8 sites with a total changeover from "home remodeling" to "home improvement" were ranking on the front page for "home improvement" and had lost almost all ranking for "home remodeling." The sites with a balanced keyword theme had dropped off the front page for "home remodeling" and were ranked on page 2 for "home improvement.

So what is the conclusion of the tests? It appears from this quick study that keyword density does in fact play a role in the relationship to getting higher listings.

It's also important to remember that the sites and landing pages content were written with a minimum of 400 words, most above the fold, and the Title Tags and Heading Tags were correctly constructed and remained constant throughout the study. In addition, page themes were carefully quality written with the necessary relational keywords.

Stephen D Gross is President and CEO of Main Street Sourcing, http://www.MainStreetSourcing.com, a leading Internet Online Marketing firm specializing in web design, branding, internet marketing, promotion, and conversion for businesses nationwide. Stephen is also manager of Stephen D Gross & Associates, an Online Marketing Consulting firm and senior editor at http://www.stephendgross.com, a business blog offering advice, business tips, and opinion for business owners and managers. Main Street Sourcing offers Open Source and Custom web design and marketing campaigns.