What is keyword density?

Keyword density is basically a fancier term for how often a given keyword appears in a text compared to the total number of words. Still a bit confused?

Just look at the example below.

Assume your main focus keyword in a text is “cheap bags.”
Your text is 1,000 words long.
You mention the keyword “cheap bags” 15 times in the text.
Your keyword density for “cheap bags” is 1.5%.

The calculation of your keyword density is very simple. Just do the following:

15 (number of times you mentioned your keyword) ÷ 1,000 (total number of words in your text) = 1.5% (keyword density)

Why is keyword density important?

There has been much debate about whether keyword density is important or not. Most agree, however, that you should never engage in keyword stuffing.

In the “old days,” you could just write your keyword 10,000 times on a page to rank on Google. Today, that is frowned upon—so don’t try it!

Instead, you should mention your target keywords a natural number of times in your text. A common rule of thumb is to aim for a keyword density of about 1.5% to 3%. However, this is highly debated, so my best advice is not to focus too much on keyword density while writing. Write your texts as naturally as possible, and you will usually stay within an acceptable range automatically.