Please... Help me convince my boss that Keyword Density is not-important / damaging.
-
If you can, please provide any and all talking points that I can use in this argument. It seems that no matter what I show him, including Matt Cutts' video debunking Keyword Density back in 2011, it doesn't seem to stick. He is fully, 100% convinced that keyword density is hugely important and we need to focus our time and energy on it.
Any sources you might have to help me show him that this is a myth would be hugely appreciated.
Thank you.
-
Well, you're partly right and partly wrong in what you are saying to your boss.
What you can assuredly say is that existing ranking positions are unlikely to increase based upon increasing your keyword density / saturation.
There are many forced at work within Google's ranking results. Of those, perhaps the largest two are authority (also sometimes referred to as popularity, but that's slightly broader) and relevance.
No matter how many times you mention a keyword on a web-page (in the content, in the Meta data, in file names, in contextual tags or Schema) that doesn't increase Google's perception of your website's authority or the individual web-page's popularity.
If a piece of content or a web-page is very relevant yet it's not found to be popular, useful or authoritative - you can bet your bottom dollar that in most query spaces the page won't rank.
If the query-space is innately low quality because hardly anyone has produced decent content, then you can rank just with relevance (sometimes even on the first page). Although that's true; most such query-spaces have diabolically low search volumes (and thus aren't really worth optimising for, unless you can figure out a way to do it en-masse and soak up lots of searches - but this usually involves expensive development and strategic content deployment work).
If web-pages are over-saturated with the same exact match keyword(s) over and over; the variant of the Panda algorithm now working inline from within Google's core algo-set is likely to 'kick off'. This can result in algorithmic devaluations or manual penalties from Google (be warned). An algorithmic devaluation is usually page or keyword level, whilst with many 'manual' Google penalties (where you get a notice in Google Search Console) - **you will fail to rank **for even your brand terms.
So what does keyword density affect? Well - it's true that using keywords (or keyphrases) and synonyms (or synonymical phrases) throughout the various different facets of on-page content, coding, Meta etc will impact the relevance of a page. That's _which _keywords the page will rank for. But will it increase or decrease existing or desired rankings by itself?
In a word - NO
Thank you for your time in reading
-
Taylor,
If you've already shown your boss data from a Google employee and that didn't work, nothing provided here will be convincing either.
I've been in similar situations where my boss has a different stance and the way we've always settled it is by running a test. This gives you your own data to prove your case.
Take a subset of pages on your site, split it in half and try your way and his way. Be careful in what you choose so it's not skewed one way or another; look at search volume for target keywords, current traffic volume, etc.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
A good experiment to test keyword/vertical difficulty?
I'm trying to rank a brand new client site but getting nowhere for our main keyword/s - this after 6 months. We have built lots of good links and literally tried everything to fix this. What's a good way for me to test the keywords on a different page / domain to be certain the problem isn't with the vertical/keyword? I'd love to have some advice on this vs. how to fix the problem, which I've asked about here before. I'm assuming buying and trying to rank a new domain is a bad idea since sandboxing etc. could make it very difficult. Perhaps sending some links to a Tumblr page that's optimized for the main keyword or something similar? Would love to hear some suggestions - thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
Complicated Duplicate Content Question...but it's fun, so please help.
Quick background: I have a page that is absolutely terrible, but it has links and it's a category page so it ranks. I have a landing page which is significantly - a bizillion times - better, but it is omitted in the search results for the most important query we need. I'm considering switching the content of the two pages, but I have no idea what they will do. I'm not sure if it will cause duplicate content issues or what will happen. Here are the two urls: Terrible page that ranks (not well but it's what comes up eventually) https://kemprugegreen.com/personal-injury/ Far better page that keeps getting omitted: https://kemprugegreen.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-attorney/ Any suggestions (other than just wait on google to stop omitting the page, because that's just not going to happen) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
My website is ranking well on most of keywords. How do I find more keywords in order to drive more traffic to my website?
I have a website which is ranking well on some good keywords ie generic and long tail. It is also ranking for some really competitive keywords. and now getting constant traffic. I want to increase organic traffic to my website. What are the best possible ways to do this? How to research more keywords and how to identify that they will really work? Please help, I am confused.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rishi.ast0 -
Traffic and keyword drop
Hello, On one of the sites that I manage - http://www.zalikihotel.gr/ , there was a significant decrease in keyword positions over the last 10-15 days. Sample screenshot is attached. Some of the keywords even dropped for 17-18 positions. From the end of April, organic traffic dropped by 30 percent. Website is mobile optimized, so that shouldn't be a problem. In the last 3-4 months, we had traffic increase. Domain authority went up by 3 points after the last index. On-site SEO was completed, and currently I'm focusing on link-building and working on bringing back to life forgotten social media. Does anybody knows what might be the case for this negative affects on our site? Do you think it's a temporary fluctuation or not? Thanks in advance. 8dSBELm.png?1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | socrateskirtsios0 -
Please help :) Troubles getting 3 types of content de-indexed
Hi there,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ltsmz
I know that it takes time and I have already submitted a URL removal request 3-4 months ago.
But I would really appreciate some kind advice on this topic. Thank you in advance to everyone who contributes! 1) De-indexing archives Google had indexed all my:
/tag/
/authorname/
archives. I have set them as no-index a few months ago but they still appear in search engine.
Is there anything I can do to speed up this de-indexing? 2) De-index /plugins/ folder in wordpress site They have also indexed all my /plugins/ folder. So I have added a disallow /plugin/ in my robots.txt 3-4 months ago, but /plugins/ still appear in search engine. What can I do to get the /plugins/ folder de-indexed?
Is my disallow /plugins/ in robots.txt making it worse because google has already indexed it and not it can't access the folder? How do you solve this? 3) De-index a subdomain I had created a subdomain containing adult content, and have it completely deleted it from my cpanel 3months ago, but it still appears in search engines. Anything else I can do to get it de-indexed? Thank you in advance for your help!0 -
URL Redirect: http://www.example.net/ vs. http://www.example.net
I currently have a website set up so that http://www.example.net/ redirects to http://www.example.net but **http://www.example.net/ **has more links and a higher page authority. Should I switch the redirect around? Here's the Open Site Explorer metrics for both: http://www.example.net/ Domain Authority: 38/100 Page Authority: 48/100 Linking Root Domains: 112 Total Links: 235 http://www.example.net Domain Authority: 38/100 Page Authority: 45/100 Linking Root Domains: 18 Total Links: 39
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbrake0 -
Website.com/blog/post vs website.com/post
I have clients with Wordpress sites and clients with just a Wordpress blog on the back of website. The clients with entire Wordpress sites seem to be ranking better. Do you think the URL structure could have anything to do with it? Does having that extra /blog folder decrease any SEO effectiveness? Setting up a few new blogs now...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PortlandGuy0 -
Multiple Keyword Research Questions, Help
Hello , I've been trying for several days to understand how keyword research works for a multi purpose website,I've read guides, articles even some chapters from the book" The Art of Seo" by O'Reilly and still no luck. It seems i can't wrap my head around keyword research,lets say I have a social gaming community website and I'm trying to rank it first on some low competition keywords + some long tail keywords.The website has functions like leaderboards, profiles,events, competitions,etc so it's not actually a news related website but it will have a blog. My website being on the games niche It would imply that I should target words that contain the word "Games" but this word generates millions of searches globally so ranking first its nearly impossible if the website is brand new. This made me pursue generic keywords formed with 2 / 3 words like fresh games, new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc which still generate lets say 30.000 searches globally each. Due to the different areas of the website like latest game events,latest games competitions,etc I'm confused If i should pursue website specific keywords like latest games events, fresh games events, latest games competitions, upcoming games competitions but these too generate 30.000 global searches each,so... 0.should i use generic keywords or keywords that include site features? So let's say I decide to pursue generic "games" keywords,due to a high competition based on the keyword I decide to go a layer deeper and for the keyword "fresh games" I obtain keywords like** "fresh games 2011,top fresh games 2011, upcoming fresh games** " and thus building a list of 30 keywords that contain " fresh games".If i do this for the rest of the keywords: ** new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc** I end up with a list of 10.000 keywords or more since each keyword generates other keywords. Is this the correct approach ? since generating 10.000 keywords sounds a lot and I'm getting the feeling that It's not how it supposed to be done,like were would I insert 10.000 keywords? So how do I know which keywords to pick and aim in order to try to get no.1 ranking? and why those? How many keywords should I use? and where should i put them? since it's not a news website so writing a lot of articles isn't an option. Should I focus on 2 words keywords with around 10.000-30.000 seaches or 2 words keywords + long tail keywords with less traffic like 100 - 5000? Is there a guide for the Keyword Analysis Tool since if i enter "fresh new games" i get a 39% keyword difficulty,is that hard to rank? and I don't know what all those color mean since some of them have higher numbers then others that are found at the top and how can i get beat a website that has has rank 10. So hopefully with your help & by some miracle I will finally be able to build a keyword list. Thank you !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arching0