Keyword density still plays a big role in SEO 2022. But how do you measure the density of your keywords and how often should each keyword appear? Keywords are still very important for search engine optimisation, as they tell search engines and readers alike what you want to say with your text. As an agency for digital marketing, we advise our clients in detail on their SEO and content marketing strategies.

Your text must please readers AND search engines

Of course, it is impossible to create content that contains all the keywords your website wants to use. You need to choose your words carefully, i.e. you need to create content that is optimised for search engines, but not so that it sounds like a computer program. This is where keyword density comes in, which is how often you use a keyword in a given unit of text. But how is keyword density actually calculated in content marketing?

How is the keyword density in texts calculated?

The following example shows you how to calculate the keyword density of an article. You will learn how to calculate the density of a keyword in a sentence and the density of a whole paragraph. It also helps you to calculate the keyword density of your entire content. The first step in calculating keyword density is to define your target audience and your product. It is also easier to first choose the name of your product (e.g. WordPress website creation). You can search the net for keyword tools that give you keyword ideas and with which you can check how often your desired keyword is searched for. You may also be able to generate a new keyword idea.

How to calculate the keyword density in your texts

Keyword density is calculated simply by dividing the keyword by the number of words in your article. This can be done per paragraph or per whole article. So if you write a text about "WordPress web design", you count up the words of your text. Then you count the frequency of your keyword and divide this number by the total number of words.

Example: The text has 818 words, the keyword "WordPress web design" occurs 19x. The formula is: (19 / 818)* 100 = 2,32 %. This is a three-rate calculation. You can also use other ways, just as you like.

What should you avoid in terms of keyword density?

First and foremost, your text must be unique. It should offer a high degree of added value for the reader. And above all, the keyword density of your focus keyword should not exceed 2.5%. In my view, this is the maximum value for keyword density. You must also realise that your text contains far more keywords than you initially thought. For example, in the above example, the word "agency" could be added in addition to "WordPress web design". Nowadays, Google and other search engines recognise the perspective from which the text is written and the content it contains.

Text length, sentence structure and sentence series with keywords

The length of the individual sentences is also important. Sentence structures consist of several sentence parts (main clause, subordinate clause). Sentence series, on the other hand, are short. A text should be a harmonious mixture of both types of sentences. This way, the keywords are better distributed and the text appears more readable. If there is a keyword in every second sentence, it can become almost annoying to read on.

SEO minds are at odds about the length of content . Some say that your text should be long with 1,000 words plus. Others say that it is not absolutely necessary to ramble. Here, too, I can unfortunately only say that a middle ground of both strategies is probably the right one. Look at your topic and before you describe whole passages as gap fillers in the text, you should rather pay attention to the content and its quality.

Long-tail keyword strategies.

So if you add the word "agency" to "WordPress web design" and write from the "we" or "I" perspective, the reader and also the search engine can deduce your company as an agency for WordPress and web design . Sounds logical, doesn't it? A small further side effect of these so-called 'long-tail keywords' is that it not only covers the basic keyword, but also others at the same time and puts them in direct relation (WordPress+agency). From my point of view, this kind of content strategy works excellently, for example, in order to eyeball one and the same theme on a website in different posts with different focuses (e.g. become location-specific with WordPress+agency+cologne or other cities).

Less (keyword density) is usually more

One thing you should be aware of is that with a high keyword density, the text often appears "robotically" overloaded and reading the text becomes an unattractive challenge. In short: if the keyword density is too high, the 'message' of your content disappears rather than being transported to the reader. In addition, the text then looks very awkward and no one wants to read it to the end, let alone buy the product in the case of product texts. So you have to create a balance between keyword density and text message, a heterogeneous distribution of your words, so to speak.

Conclusion

When writing a text for your website, blog or e-commerce shop, make sure you have enough content (approx. 600 - 1,000 words). Describe your topic precisely and avoid long sentences. You should also not ramble and write certain text passages just to fill in gaps. Both search engines and human readers pay close attention to the meaning of a text. If I start reading a text and then realise that it is a long explanatory text, I give up. Just like explanatory videos, such texts should not be too long and should be written in a varied way.

By the way: the keyword "keyword density" appears 16 times in this text, which is about 1.8% density. 🙂