Keyword Density Shot Down...Again

Jul 26, 2005 - 9:29 am 1 — by
Filed Under Keyword Research

A HighRanking Forum thread named 8/10 - Need Advice, keyword research - getting 10/10 shows how quickly SEOs like, keyword research expert Dan Thies, agrees with well known SEO woman, Jill Whalen that when optimizing pages, one should not worry about keyword density figures.

I'll quote Dan's reply here:

As Jill says, keyword density means nothing. You're going to spend a bunch of time chasing your tail with tools like that.

If you want to play around and test/tweak stuff, test your TITLE tags and the first heading (H1) on the page. You can make changes, and see how your rankings change. A few rounds of testing on each should give you 90% of what you're going to get by fiddling with the HTML code on a given web page.

For the rest of the copy, just work on using keywords naturally, and make it work as copy. Do that well, and you're at about 95% if not higher. Now forget about the other 5% and use your internal links to help searchers find the right page for the right search terms.

Ron Carnell offers good advice as well; "The key to any scientific testing is repeatability."

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 23, 2026

Oct 23, 2026 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Chatter, PHP Exploit, AI SEO Worthwhile, Google Local, Google Ads, ChatGPT Ads & More

Oct 23, 2026 - 8:01 am
Google

Google AI Overview Citation Cards With AI-Generated Summary Snippets

Oct 23, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

JPEG XL Image Format Not Supported By Google Images & Google Discover

Oct 23, 2026 - 7:41 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Tests New Advanced Performance Reports

Oct 23, 2026 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Universal Cart In Search Is Live, Yep

Oct 23, 2026 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Konfabulator Is on Yahoo!'s Dashboard