One of the more controversial aspects of web content writing is keyword density. This density has to be just right for proper search engine ranking. The first thing to remember here is that there isn’t one single rule of thumb that covers the complexity of keyword density rules in their entirety. The more experienced the web content writer, the greater their understanding of the right placement of keywords.

What’s The Harm In Keyword Stuffing?

In the past, web developers achieved high page ranks thanks to the practice of keyword stuffing: using so many keywords in the page that the meaning of the article was completely obscure. This practice continued until search engines caught on and started penalizing these sites. In fact, Google rejects any web page that is obviously attempting to do keyword stuffing. The result: the offending site is blocked from showing up on searches.

Understanding the mechanism of how keyword density actually works takes patience and some amount of trial and error. Tools that automatically calculate keyword density on a page are very useful and will save you quite a bit of time. It is difficult to take a pencil and paper and start calculating the keyword density every time you change the number of key terms on the page. Thankfully, these tools don’t just calculate keyword density by pages, but also by chunks of text. This is helpful because you can clearly see where you can reduce keyword density and where you need to put in more keywords. Stuffing all keywords into a single line or paragraph is not very useful, and the text will read poorly.

Keeping It Simple

As a writer, it may not always be possible for you to understand the complex algorithms that the search engines use for promoting a web page to the top 10 results. Keep in mind that Google penalizes sites that have more than 3% keyword density. If you are writing for Yahoo! or MSN, you can have a density of 6-7%.

However, these are just very general guidelines. If a 3% keyword density makes your content look "funny," then it’s probably time to pay attention to the meaning and syntax of language rather than the number of keywords. Focus on the readership of the site, not on keyword density.

Here are some questions to ask yourself before you start writing content that’s aimed at increasing site ranking:

1. What exactly is the goal of the text? Is it written for sales, opinion forming, and survey, directing traffic to another site or for simple ad revenue generation?
2. Who am I writing for? Is the copy meant for general readers or a niche audience?
3. Which keywords should I use for getting the best results?

Understanding how search engines work is not rocket science. However, it helps to get an experienced SEO writer to advise and assist you if you are not a professional web writer. Keeping the above points in mind will move your webpage rapidly up the SEO rankings. Just keep your writing natural and evenly balanced.