As a webmaster and writer, I love writing strange analogies. Correlating wine consumption and SEO tactics seem like a far off comparative subject, don’t they?  I think that that my comparison, in this article between those two items of discussion will prove some matching points and you will find it interesting.

It can be said that keyword density and everyday wine consumption can be compared. Some doctors feel that daily red wine consumption can help in the

prevention of heart attacks and it can lower LDL or bad cholesterol. On the other hand, drinking too much red wine can also have detrimental effects as well. This

red wine and keyword-density analogy does apply to the use of keywords density in articles in the world of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Websites that take Search Engine Optimization very serious will support this analogy. Website page rank has a direct reflection of search engine results and how well they are linked with proper keywords. In order to be successful, the proper use of keywords or keyword phrases that is relevant to the products and services that these websites offer. Therefore, many inexperienced webmasters, that think they know SEO, are

convinced that the more they use the keywords in their articles, the higher the level of SEO will be provided in those particular articles and ultimately delivering better page rank. However, it doesn’t really work that easy. Like the analogy of drinking red wine, if there are too many keywords on the articles, the articles will get receive SERP penalties as they are considered overuse or spam like in nature. Hence, there has to be the proper proportionate use if keyword density on articles that are considered well written articles.  The culminating use of keywords in the proper portion is achieving a balanced density, which means the number of repetitive keyword uses should be balanced with the amount of words in the articles.

Calculations for Keywords vs. Keyword Phrases

The calculation of keyword density and keyword phrases is very similar, in fact.  The main difference lay between humans and software. The thing (or person) who analyzes the relation between keywords and user queries is really a search engine, not a human being. In order to get the proper keyword density, the percentage should not be more than 5% of the total words written using your keywords. Based on the advice of some highly regarded search engine optimization experts, the ideal percentage of keywords density is only 2%-3%. So, if you would like to use keywords, you have to calculate the density by dividing the number of particular repeating keyword with the entire sum of words in the article.   For example if your article has 1000 words and you use a keyword 20 times, that would equal 2% and that is acceptable. If you use a keyword 100 times in that article that would equal 10% and that is way too high and unacceptable.

Keyword phrases are to be considered exactly the same way as keyword density and they are just calculated similarly but using the phrase instead of the actual word.  For example, a “keyword” consisting of multiple terms, e.g. “wide screen monitor” should be considered an entire word in itself. It is the frequency of the phrase “wide screen monitor” within an article that determines the key phrase density.

In conclusion, all you need to know when writing an article just use common sense in how you are conveying the article and, at the same time, use the (key) words as how you would speak them to another person.  Each search engine has its own equation formula to make a standard of density measurement. So, if Google has a certain keyword formula, Yahoo may be different. Most people target the most-used search engine, Google, though.