by Christina Pomoni

Created on: August 06, 2010

In the context of search engine optimization (SEO), keyword density, prominence and frequency are particularly important with respect to a website’s ranking in the major search engines. These three terms are often confusing to website owners. However, each one of them is extremely important to onsite optimization and if you are able to implement them in the context of a web marketing strategy, you may see a huge difference in your website’s ranking.

Keyword Density

Keyword density measures the number of times a keyword or a keyword phrase appears within a web page against the total number of words on this page. For instance, if a keyword occurs 4 times in a web page of 600 words, the keyword density of the web page is 0.0067, by dividing 4 by 600. Keyword density is always calculated as a percentage of the total words on the page, therefore 0.67%.

Generally, webmasters suggest that the preferred keyword density ratio, although it is not the same in every search engine, ranges from 2% to 5%. The higher the keyword density, the higher the website’s visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPS). Typically, webpages that have a high keyword density are more likely to be ranked higher in the major search engines. Also, a keyword that appears 4 times in a web page of 600 words has a lower keyword density (0.67%) than a keyword that appears 5 times in a web page of similar length (0.83%).

Keyword Prominence

Keyword prominence indicates how many significant keywords a webpage contains. The more important keywords are typically placed near the area that it is more relevant, anywhere at the top of the page, sentence, title or Meta tag. Keyword prominence is critical to the major search engines, but particularly to the directory search engines like Yahoo. In this case, placing the keyword in the beginning of your website description may make a huge difference in your website ranking in the rating systems.

Keyword Frequency

Keyword frequency measures the number of times a keyword or a keyword phrase appears within a web page.  The difference from keyword density is that keyword frequency alone is not enough to rank a website high in the major search engines. Even if a keyword is repeated too often, it needs to be related to the webpage’s products and/or services because, otherwise, it will look suspicious. This is why keyword density is important because it not only shows how often a keyword is repeated in a webpage, but it also shows the frequency in relation to the total number of words on the webpage. Therefore, unlike keyword frequency, keyword density shows the relevance of the webpage to a particular keyword or keyword phrase.

Overall, identifying and understanding the difference between keyword density, prominence and frequency is the first step in developing a keyword strategy and achieve effective SEO for your website. This will ensure quality web content and high traffic levels that will be converted into sales.

Sources:

http://www.submittoday.com/keyword_density.htm

http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/15/15_4/keyword-d ensity-why-keywo.shtml

http://newpress.com/critichelp/contents/KeywordPromi nence.htm

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