• SEO-Blog
  • Startseite
  • RSS-Feed, complete Feed
  • About the Blog, Blogcharts
  • Archive: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
• Weitere Postings
  • Did Google disown Burda?
  • IndexWatch 06/2009
  • ChromeOS – Google is developing its own operating system
  • Google Productsearch with an impressive growth-rate
  • IndexWatch 07/2009
  • Google Caffeine: first impressions of the next generation
  • IndexWatch 08/2009
  • Is Ask.com using Google-Data?
  • Volksphone and other Linkbaits
  • Universal Search evaluation
•  

Keyword-density: relevant SEO-basics or negligible thing of the past?

There are a multitude of different opinions when it comes to keyword-density being a ranking-factor: for some, it's nothing more than a reminder of the early years of this century, where you were able to get far ahead in the Fireball searchengine by simply repeating the keyword numerous times in the text and filename. Others are still measuring their SEO-work by the percentage that the keyword takes up in the text. Seeing how, like so often, the truth can probably be found somewhere between those extremes, I pondered about this and came up with a test, with which I will try to get to the bottom of this or at least find some partial truth.

The fundamental idea of the following test is the fact, that Google is ranking sites with a higher keyword-density better than sites with a lower one (under the condition that all other factors stay the same). With that in mind, I set up this test: a bunch of useless text with the keyword-density as their only distinguishing factor – all values between 0,1 and 10% are encompassed herein. I have tried to keep all other factors constant. Whats interesting to us, is which sites will show up first when we query the keyword? Surprisingly, we really do see the texts with a high keyword-density show up first: all results on the first resultspage have a keyword-density between 7,0 to 9,8%. When we take a look at the first 60 positions, we get this picture:


On first glance, it seems to be a pretty straightforward trend: the higher the keyword-density, the better the ranking. Though that would have been too easy, right? Sadly, that is true. When I entered the rest of the results into my Excel-table, I got these results:


Once we go past position 60, the picture starts to look rather frantic. What I think happens here, is this: we all know that Google is trying their best to prevent any manipulation within the SERPs. They are using a multitude of methods to achieve this, the well-known “filters” being one of them. If a site gets flagged as showing too much negative behavior – regardless of how they get the negative attention – they are pushed back in the rankings. A popular penalty is the repositioning of a result beyond position 60, which is also called a “penalty +60”. And that is exactly what seems to have happened here. Thanks to some kind of misbehavior, those pages have managed to trigger one or more filters, which moved them to the back of the rankings. A while ago, I wrote something about how Google detects changes from the index 'norm', titled “is this still normal?” and maybe that is exactly what is happening here.

So what conclusions can we draw from this test? For one, the keyword-density is definitely a ranking-factor. More seems to be better and it seems that, at this moment, there is not a (sensible) upwards limit. Thought the higher the keyword-density gets, the more likely it is, that the site will get caught in a filter, which will cause it to be passed to the back – the test shows that a value between 1,0% and 4,0% is a secure parameter and I would honestly be quite surprised if you could sensibly top that percentage, while still keeping the text legible.