What are your thoughts on keyword density?

[underscorelive]

Useless metric?

Good as an indicator, but not of any real value?

Best way to judge how well content is optimised?

I've heard all kinds of opinions, what's yours?

Thanks!

[underscorelive]

All absolutely valid responses - we currently just write copy for our users and optimise HTML for the search engines, seems to be working well thus far

Thanks guys!

[KevinBudzynski]

In my opinion, as long as the page title, headings and some of the content have your kw in it, you should be fine. The content should be natural, but because it focuses on a specific good/service those terms will naturally flow out a bit more.

Google understands "natural" much more than people think. If something is "unnatural" it might consider it giving the person who queried that keyword a bad user experience and that is what Google doesn't want to do. If the searcher always has a good user experience, they will come back (and that is one of the objectives of Google Algorithm).

[EGOL]

I never even think about KW density.  I just write in natural language.  Sometimes that produces a lot of keyword instances in my writing, sometimes it doesn't.

I think that it is hard enough to write great content without having the additional burden of stuffing or subtracting some special words into the content. What a PITA.

Google doesn't want people doing that.  Save yourself some time and just write like a human.  That's what I do and my stuff ranks fine.

[Mike.Goracke]

Keyword density can help Google identify what your page is about.

There is not a certain % of keyword density that will give you good or bad results - the thing to keep in mind while you are writing is your visitors. You want to mention your keyword where applicable in your content; however, you do not want it to seem forced.

Best way to judge how well content is optimized? - I like using SEOmoz On-Page Optimization tool.

David Naylor has a pretty cool keyword density tool which returns some good info.

Hope this helps.

Mike