Keyword Density - More Than Meets the Eye

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One of the standard elements of web ...
is Keyword Density: up until very ... ratio of keywords to rest of body text ...
deemed to be one of the most ... emp One of the standard elements of web pageoptimization is Keyword Density: up until very recentlythe ratio of keywords to rest of body text wasgenerally deemed to be one of the most importantfactors employed by search engines to determine a website's ranking.However, this basically linear approach is graduallychanging now: as mathematical linguistics andautomatic content recognition technology progresses,the major search engines are shifting their focustowards "theme" biased algorithms that do not rely onanalysis of individual web pages anymore but, rather,will evaluate whole web sites to determine theirtopical focus or "theme" and its relevance in relationto users' search requests.This is not to say that keyword density is losing inimportance, quite the contrary.
However, it is turninginto a lot more complex technology than a simplecomputation of word frequency per web page can handle.Context analysis is now being determined by a numberof auxiliary linguistic disciplines and technology,for example:* semantic text analysis* textlexical database technology* distribution analysis of lexical components (such as nouns, adjectives, verbs)* evaluation of distance between semantic elements* AI and data mining technology based pattern recognition;* term vector database technology etc.All these are now contributing to the increasingsophistication of the relevance determination process.If you feel this is beginning to sound too much likerocket science for comfort, you may not be very farfrom the truth: it seems that the future of searchengine optimization will be determined by what theindustry is fond to term the "word gurus".A sound knowledge of fundamental linguist methodologyplus more than a mere smattering of statisticalcalculus will most probably be paramount to achievesuccessful search engine rankings in the foreseeablefuture. Merely repeating the well worn mantra "contentis king!", as some of the lesser qualified SEOprofessionals and very many amateurs are currentlydoing, may admittedly have a welcome sedative effectby creating a feeling of fuzzy warmth and comfort.
Butto all practical purposes it is tantamount towhistling in the dark and fails miserably in doingjustice to the overall complexity of the processinvolved.It should be noted that we are talking presence ANDfuture here: many of the classical techniques ofsearch engine optimization are still working more orless successfully, but there is little doubt that theyare rapidly losing their cutting edge and willprobably be as obsolete in a few months' time asspamdexing or invisible text - both optimizationtechniques well worth their while throughout the 90s -have become today.So where does keyword density come into this equation?And how is it determined anyway?There's the rub: the term "keyword density" is by nomeans as objective and clear-cut as many people (someSEO experts included) will have it! The reason forthis is the inherent structure of hypertext markuplanguage (HTM) code: as text content elements areembedded in clear text command tags governing displayand layout, it is not easy to determine what should orshould not be factored into any keyword densitycalculus.The matter is complicated further by the fact that themeta tags inside a HTML page's header may containkeywords and description content: should these beadded to the total word count or not? Seeing that somesearch engines will ignore meta tags altogether (e.g.Lycos, Excite and Fast/Alltheweb), whereas others arestill considering them (at least partially), it getseven more confusing. What may qualify for a keyworddensity of 2% under one frame of reference (e.g.including meta tags, graphics ALT tags, comment tags,etc.) may easily be reduced to 1% or less underanother.Further questions arise: will meta tags following theDublin Convention ("D.C.
tags") be counted in or not?And what about HTTP-EQUIV tags? Would you really betthe ranch that TITLE tags in tables, forms or DIVelements will be ignored? Etc., etc.Another fundamental factor generating massivefuzziness left, right and center, is the issue ofsemantic delimiters: what's a "word" and what isn't?Determing a lexical unity (aka a "word") bypunctuation is a common though pretty low tech methodwhich may lead to some rather unexpected results.Say you are featuring an article by an author named"John Doe" who happens to sport a master's degree inarts, commonly abbreviated as "M.A.". While mostalgorithms will correctly count "John" and "Doe" asseparate words, the "M.A." string is quite anotherstory.
Some algorithms will actually count this fortwo words ("M" and "A") because of the period (dot) isconsidered a delimiter - whereas others (surprise!)will not. But how would you know which search enginesare handling it in which way? Answer: you don't, andthat's exactly where the problems start.The only feasible approach to master this predicamentis trial and error.
The typical beginner's inquiry"What's the best keyword density for AltaVista?",understandable and basically rational as it may be, isbest answered with the fairly frustrating butultimately precise: "It all depends - your mileage mayvary." It is only by experimenting with keyworddensities under standardized, comparable conditionsyourself that you will be able to come to significantand viable conclusions.To get going, here are some links to pertinentprograms that will help you determine (and, in onecase, even generate) keyword densities.KeyWord Density Analyzer (KDA)------------------------------An all time classic of client based keyword densitysoftware is Roberto Grassi's powerful KeyWord DensityAnalyzer (KDA). It is immensely configurable andoffers a fully featured free evaluation version fordownload.
Find it here:(Expect to pay appr. $99 for the registered version.)Concordance-----------Concordance is a powerful client based text analysistool for making word lists and concordances fromelectronic texts.A trial version can be downloaded here:(Expect to pay appr.
$89 for the registered version.)fantomas keyMixer(TM)---------------------Our own fantomas keyMixer(TM) is the world's firstautomatic keyword density generator, enabling you tocreate web pages with ultra precise densities to thefirst decimal digit. Read more about this server basedPerl/CGI application here:(Expect to pay appr.
$99 for the registered version.) Article Tags: Keyword Density, Meta Tags Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .