Garrett
01-27-2004, 03:04 PM
Keyword density is now a more exact science, thanks to the people at GoRank, who recently released an extensive report on keyword analysis. They chose 2000 low-competition keywords and analyzed the top 10 results for all of them. They chose low-competition keywords to insure a more accurate look at how Google looks at keyword density.
I wrote to GoRank and asked about their findings. I wanted to know if there were any surprises, and how their findings mattered to website owners. Here's what they said:
Research Goals. In this research, we set out to find the raw keyword density of results on Google and differences between the top ten results. The averages are helpful for people who like general guidelines.
General Guidelines. For those people, the data indicates that the overall average keyword density for a top ten page in our results is 2.1%. For the page title, the data shows the top ranking pages have an average of between 6 and 7 words in the title with a keyword density of about 17%. The average number of words in the link text on a page was almost 200 words, and there was an average of about 1 keyword occurrence found in the link text. All of the other page elements generally had less than one occurrence on average on a page.
A better analysis of the data is the analysis of trends within the top results.
Top Ten Results Trends. Within the top ten results, the average number of words on a page tends to increase as the ranking improves, the same happens with the density. The top result had an average page keyword density of 2.5% which decreased gradually to 1.9% for the tenth ranking result. The page titles also had a very interesting pattern. The top result had an average keyword density of 20% and decreased to 16.3% at the tenth result.
The Most Surprising Information. The most surprising information was that 37% of all of the top 10 results analyzed contained the keyword somewhere in the URL. This often seems to be an optimization technique that is overlooked, but the data shows that it is a very important element. Only 10% of the results contained the keyword in the domain name while 22% contained the keyword in the filename.
Another surprising result was that the data suggests that there is an over-optimization penalty for meta-keywords, bold text, and heading text. As the ranking falls from the first position to the tenth position, the keyword density increases for these elements. It seems the more keywords you put into these elements the lower the rankings go.
More To Come. I think that is a pretty good overview of the major findings from this first set of data. Next month there should be a lot to learn by comparing how the data changes month to month. If you or your readers have any ideas for additional research that could unlock more search engine secrets please send them my way.
George
GoRank.com (http://www.GoRank.com)
Read the complete report (http://www.gorank.com/research/01072004_Google_Density_Report.php?PHPSESSID=d9d80 a41498dc5573dbc510e8b2974c2) and tell us what you think the results mean.
I wrote to GoRank and asked about their findings. I wanted to know if there were any surprises, and how their findings mattered to website owners. Here's what they said:
Research Goals. In this research, we set out to find the raw keyword density of results on Google and differences between the top ten results. The averages are helpful for people who like general guidelines.
General Guidelines. For those people, the data indicates that the overall average keyword density for a top ten page in our results is 2.1%. For the page title, the data shows the top ranking pages have an average of between 6 and 7 words in the title with a keyword density of about 17%. The average number of words in the link text on a page was almost 200 words, and there was an average of about 1 keyword occurrence found in the link text. All of the other page elements generally had less than one occurrence on average on a page.
A better analysis of the data is the analysis of trends within the top results.
Top Ten Results Trends. Within the top ten results, the average number of words on a page tends to increase as the ranking improves, the same happens with the density. The top result had an average page keyword density of 2.5% which decreased gradually to 1.9% for the tenth ranking result. The page titles also had a very interesting pattern. The top result had an average keyword density of 20% and decreased to 16.3% at the tenth result.
The Most Surprising Information. The most surprising information was that 37% of all of the top 10 results analyzed contained the keyword somewhere in the URL. This often seems to be an optimization technique that is overlooked, but the data shows that it is a very important element. Only 10% of the results contained the keyword in the domain name while 22% contained the keyword in the filename.
Another surprising result was that the data suggests that there is an over-optimization penalty for meta-keywords, bold text, and heading text. As the ranking falls from the first position to the tenth position, the keyword density increases for these elements. It seems the more keywords you put into these elements the lower the rankings go.
More To Come. I think that is a pretty good overview of the major findings from this first set of data. Next month there should be a lot to learn by comparing how the data changes month to month. If you or your readers have any ideas for additional research that could unlock more search engine secrets please send them my way.
George
GoRank.com (http://www.GoRank.com)
Read the complete report (http://www.gorank.com/research/01072004_Google_Density_Report.php?PHPSESSID=d9d80 a41498dc5573dbc510e8b2974c2) and tell us what you think the results mean.