It’s been over four years but still some people think keyword density has business being a legitimate SEO strategy. Ensure keywords account for 5% of your total content and the magic number should thrill Google. Nothing could be more wrong. In fact, Matt Cutts and other top SEO names have even suggested that keyword density that is similar across numerous pages will raise red flags.
In fact, keyword density is even less important than meta tags since some of them still hold purposes (look back for our Meta tag articles). Keyword density is the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords. Old SEOs using this technique feel there exists a magic number that pleases the search engines, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The fact of the matter is there is no use whatsoever for keyword density tools or numbers given you’re creating natural and coherent content. Remember–CONTENT IS KING–to SEO at least. That means 1%, 5%, 10%, etc., are irrelevant. The only KW density number you should pay slight attention to is 0%, however, some would even dispute that.
New web sites may wish to release content optimized for certain keywords and including them within their unique content to purposefully attempt to rank higher and higher for the keyword phrase. Established web sites may in fact write great content without specific keywords in mind (KWD = 0%) and will wait to see which keywords the search engines will send traffic for.
Generally, the only value you need to worry about density wise is 0%, otherwise, coherent and quality content will rank higher than artificial content with 5% KWD across all pages. Discard your keyword density tools and focus your time elsewhere–like content–did I mention that already?