Tag: keyword prominence

How to Calculate Keyword Density

I am back from a very nice trip to the beautiful island of Kauai here in Hawaii and I highly recommend visiting this beautiful island for some great sights that will blow you away.  The Kauai island offers great hiking, kayaking, eating, sunbathing options.  If you are interested in visiting an island that keeps that country feeling, then you should definitely visit Kauai.

Here are two samples:

Poipu Sunset - Kauai Island
Jen Toba
Wailua Waterfall - Kaui Island

 

Beautiful!  Just like today’s topic in the series of the 5 key factors that determine that your website is a returned match on a search engine query.  The first posting was about Google AdWords, the second one about Keyword Prominence and Link Popularity.

Calculating your Keyword Density, that is the percentage that your selected keyword is out of the total number of words in a selected number of web pages, takes 4 easy steps.

Step 1: Write the text of your web page on any text editor of your choice (e.g. MS Word). Or just copy/paste the selected text(s) from your website(s) into the word editor.

Step 2: Find out the total word count of your text using the Word Count tool of your text editor.

Step 3: Using your Find tool, find out how many times your keyword appears on the text.  Write down that number.

Step 4: Divide the number that your keyword appeared by the total word count.  Multiply the result by 100. This is the keyword density of your keyword.

Let’s do an example!

Let’s use the opening paragraph of this post and find the keyword density of island.

Step 1: I copy/paste this text into MS Word.

I am back from a very nice trip to the beautiful island of Kauai here in Hawaii and I highly recommend visiting this beautiful island for some great sights that will blow you away.  The Kauai island offers great hiking, kayaking, eating, sunbathing options.  If you are interested in visiting an island that keeps that country feeling, then you should definitely visit Kauai.

Step 2: From the menu bar, select Tools, then Word Count.  Total word count is 63.

Step 3 : From the menu bar, select Edit, then Find.  The keyword “island” appears a total of 4 times.

Step 4: 4 / 63 * 100 = 6.34%

Easy, isn’t it?

Yes, but there are some important points to consider.

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  1. Major search engines have their own “skip words”.  These skip words may or not may not set by the user.  Usually words with three or less letters are skipped (e.g. and, or, I, etc.) and not included in the total word count.
  2. Partial matches may or not be included (e.g. island versus islands).
  3. Tags may or many not be included.
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Therefore, when using online Keyword Density calculators, make sure that you look for these three points.  I recommend Google Rankings Keyword Density Calculator (not affiliated with Google).
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According to Brian Clifton in his How Search Engine Optimisation Works whitepaper, SEO companies usually aim for a Keyword Density between 5 – 10 %.  Our previously calculated Keyword Density in the example above meets that criteria.  Not too bad.
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See you next time!
Jen Toba
Hiking at Kauai Island

 

 

 

Keyword Prominence and Link Popularity

Keeping the promise that the next 5 posts will be regarding the 5 key factors that determine website appearances on search engine results, I will discuss today keyword prominence and link popularity. The last post was more of a formality that needed to be put in place right away!  Please take it as the idaconcpts blog readers’ bill of rights.

 

When preparing a website for SEO, keyword prominence and link popularity require more work on the developer’s site because the outcome of these tasks will physically alter the layout of that website.

Keyword prominence takes a look at various factors, but the two most important are 1) the physical location of the keyword(s) and 2) the keyword(s) within page link text.  Physical location simply means that keywords placed at the top of the page are more relevant than at the bottom of the page.  Typically, you will find pay-per-click pages that are trying to maximize their click-rate by using hundreds of keywords at the bottom of the page (either in fine print or mixed with the color of the background).  You don’t want to be one of them!  In the other hand, keywords within page link text is an art by itself.   Check out this free keyword density and prominence tool and use your favorite website.  Keyword prominence checks that the keywords that you select for your website should be within page link text. If your site is about web analytics tools.  Don’t just say, click here.  Better say, for example, click here for better web analytics tools.

Link popularity was invented by Sergy Bin and Larry Page (yup, those Google guys) and it is the foundation of their Search Engine Google.  In simple words, link popularity deals with the quantity and quality of the links leading towards your website.  It is not just a matter of every possible website linking back to your website, but rather the ones that are relevant to your keywords.

Conclusions:

  1. Mark your keywords clearly at the top of every page of your website.
  2. Network! Talk with experts in your field and create partnerships with them so that you can cross-reference each other.