Keyword density and usage can be difficult to understand when just starting out. Especially as people new to this, may not be aware of search engine algorithms their variation and the fact they are being updated frequently. Years ago when I started it was simply down to META tags and you would stuff in as many words as you could. Google no longer recognises theses tags, while other search engines still do. In current times there is a need to also focus on placement of these words in titles and body text. Most importantly now, less is more.

If irrelevant words are used and as many phrases are stuffed in as possible, there is risk of a web site no longer being listed in the search engines. This is called being de-indexed and if your not on the list you don't exist. Due to the nature of search engines, how they work and that the inner workings are kept behind closed doors, it of course makes the situation more difficult to gauge. For this very reason you will always get a variety of recommendations from different quarters. One strategy of course is to follow the organisations that have been doing SEO for a while and with good results, take Ezinearticles for example they allow only a Keyword Density of 2%.

Take the following example, a website that sells products for bird owners with a list such as: bird lovers gifts, bird owners gifts, gifts for bird lovers, gifts for bird owners, etc. If they were to use all of those phrases within a product description that was typically 100 words in length this would be inappropriate. Not only would it not give a clear statement to the search engines, it may very well be ‘slapped’ with the label of keyword stuffing because the terms bird and gifts would be appearing at a very high density. Another aspect would be the readability for site visitors who could considered the web page as being poor quality.

If someone had a list of fourteen keywords that they wanted to rank for it would be poor practice to put all of them into every page of their website. If they were to do this, it could easily end up producing the opposite effect with the possibility of never ranking for any of them. To be effective use one keyword per page if you have fourteen then fourteen different pages will be necessary. By placing them all in one page, you would be diluting their effectiveness and confuse the search engines because they are unable to clearly establish the words with significance as there are so many of this type.

Place the main phrase in a title heading at the top of the page. Concentrate on the one phrase for that webpage, include it in the first sentence and once in the last sentence. For me this can be as much a challenge as trying to add your wording as many times as possible without lose of continuity, while retaining the correct density percentage of two percent.

If the length of text is greater than two hundred words, add your word or phrase once more in the middle of the body of your text. Because the focused wording is included it in your heading, the search engines will establish it is the main focus of the page. You no longer need to place it in every hundred words, or less. Just make sure it appears as close to the beginning of the text and as close to the end of the text as possible.

Anyone doing SEO may be surprised at how much better their site performs in Google, Yahoo etc. when they give them a very clear message of what each pages is about. Sites will move up the rankings for each phrase because the pages are now clearly defined and are using the proper density of 2%. Submit Express dot com, offer a free to use analyser that will make fine tuning a lot easier for anyone embarking on the road of optimisation, also seek out on or off line text analysers to calculate the percentages.