SEO Step-by-Step Tutorial: 8 Easy Basics for Beginners to Master
I'll walk you through the basic vocabulary you need to know and tips for learning SEO on your own. Then, we'll review a step-by-step SEO tutorial.
keyword density
One of my best tips is to read what you’ve written aloud. If you’ve repeated your keyword too many times, you’ll probably be able to hear it as you speak. You can also use the <anchor>keyword density</anchor> formula, dividing the number of times a keyword is used on your page by the total number of words. Here’s an easy example:
The Beginner's Guide to Keyword Density
Menu

Search...

Menu

- ###### Blogs

### Blogs

Trusted by business builders worldwide, the HubSpot Blogs are your number-one source for education and inspiration.

### Newsletters

All of HubSpot's handcrafted email newsletters, tucked in one place.

### Videos

Browse our collection of educational shows and videos on YouTube.

- ###### Podcasts

### Podcasts

HubSpot Podcast Network is the destination for business professionals who seek the best education on how to grow a business.

- ###### Resources

### Resources

Expand your knowledge and take control of your career with our in-depth guides, lessons, and tools.

### The HubSpot Customer Platform

All of HubSpot's marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, operations, and commerce software on one platform. See pricing

Loading

###### Oh no! We couldn't find anything like that.

Try another search, and we'll give it our best shot.

Load More Results

# The Beginner's Guide to Keyword Density

Caroline Forsey

Published:

May 05, 2022

When you’re writing SEO-optimized content, how many keywords are enough? How many are too many? How do you know? And what happens if Google and other search engines determine your site is "stuffed" with keywords?

marketer checking the keyword density of a webpage

In our beginner's guide to keyword density, we'll cover the basics, dig into why it matters, and offer functional formulas and simple tools that can make sure your keyword strategies are working as intended.

## What is keyword density?

Keyword density — also called keyword frequency — is the number of times a specific keyword appears on a webpage compared to the total word count. It's often reported as a percentage or a ratio; the higher the value, the more your selected keyword appears on your page.

## Why Keyword Density Matters

Keywords are a critical part of your SEO strategy.

Along with relevant content and optimized website design, ranking for the right keywords helps your site stand out from the crowd — and get closer to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

So it's no surprise that a substantial amount of SEO advice centers on keywords: Doing your research can help you select and rank for top-performing keywords in your market, in turn boosting user engagement and increasing total sales.

Why? Because keywords drive searches. When users go looking for products or services, they'll typically use a keyword that reflects their general intent, and expect search engines to serve up relevant results.

While tools like Google now take into account factors such as geographical area and page

authority — defined in part by the number of visitors to your webpage and in part by "dofollow" links from reputable sites that link back to your page — keywords remain a critical factor in website success.

The caveat? You can't simply "stuff" as many keywords as possible into your content and expect reliable results.

This practice is called keyword stuffing, and it’s a black-hat SEO practice that can lead to penalization and even full-on removal from the SERPs.

## What is keyword stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is the practice of writing low-quality content with a higher-than-average frequency of the same keyword. The purpose of keyword stuffing is to trick search engines, i.e. Google, to rank your page higher in the search engine results pages. This black-hat tactic no longer works.

During the wild west days of the first search engines, brands and SEO firms would write low-value content and cram it with keywords and keyword tags, along with links to similarly-stuffed pages on the same site. Not surprisingly, visitors grew frustrated and search engine providers realized they needed a better approach.

Now, keyword stuffing has the opposite effect — search engines will penalize the page rankings of sites that still choose to keyword stuff.

## By the Numbers: The Keyword Density Formula

How do you calculate keyword density? The formula is straightforward: Divide the number of times a keyword is used on your page by the total number of words on the page.

Here's an easy example: Your page has 1,000 words and your keyword is used 10 times. This gives:

10 / 1000 = .001

Multiply this by 100 to get a percentage, which in this case is 1%.

There's also another formula sometimes used to assess keyword usage: TF-IDF, which stands for "term frequency-inverse document frequency". The idea here is to assess the frequency of a keyword on specific pages (TF) against the number of times this word appears across multiple pages on your site (IDF). The result helps determine how relevant your keyword is for specific pages.

While TF is straightforward, it's easy to get sidetracked by IDF. Here, the goal is to understand the rarity of your keyword across multiple documents. IDF is measured in values between 0 and 1 — the closer to 0, the more a word appears across your pages. The closer to 1, the more it appears on a single page and no others.

Consider this formula in practice. Applied to very common words such as "the" or "but", the TD-IDF score will approach zero. Applied to a specific keyword, the value should be much closer to 1 — if not, you may need to reconsider your keyword strategy.

## What is good keyword density?

While there are no hard and fast rules for keyword density beyond always-relevant "don't keyword stuff" advice, many SEOs recommend using approximately 1-2 keyword for every 100 words of copy. That factors in to about 1-2% keyword density.

It's also worth remembering the value of keyword variants — words and phrases that are similar, but not identical, to your primary keyword. Let's say your website sells outdoor lighting solutions. While your highest-value keyword for SERPs is "outdoor lighting", stuffing as many uses of this keyword into as many pages as possible will reduce rather than improve overall SEO.

Instead, consider keyword variants; terms that are close to your primary keyword but not an exact copy. In the case of "outdoor lighting", variants such as "garden lighting", "patio lighting", "deck lighting" or "landscape lighting" can help your page rank higher without running afoul of keyword-stuffing rules.

Not sure what variants make the most sense for your website? Use the "searches related to" section at the bottom of Google's SERP for your primary keyword. Here's why: Google has put significant time and effort into understanding intent, so the "searches related to" section will show you similar terms to your primary keyword.

## Keyword Density Tools

While you can do the math on keyword density yourself by calculating the total word and keyword counts across every page on your website, this can quickly become time- and resource-intensive as your website expands and page volumes increase.

Keyword density tools help streamline this process. Potential options include:

### 1. SEO Review Tools Keyword Density Checker

keyword density checker: seo review tools
This free tool is browser-based — simply input your site URL or page text, then complete the "I'm not a robot" captcha to perform a keyword density check. While this tool doesn't offer the in-depth analytics of other options on the list, it's a great way to get an overview of current keyword density.

#### Why We Like It

SEO Review Tool’s keyword density checker includes a color warning for keywords with an abnormally high level of appearance, so you can easily see which ones you need to pare down. It also gives you a breakdown of the keywords by word-number and allows you to exclude certain phrases.

### 2. SEOBook Keyword Density Analyzer

keyword density checker: seobook
Similar to the tool above, the SEOBook Keyword Density Analyzer is free — but it does require an account to use. Along with basic keyword density reports, this tool also lets you search for your target keyword in Google, pull data for five of the top-ranked pages using the same keyword, then analyze them to see how your keyword stacks up.

#### Why We Like It

The SEOBook keyword density analyzer allows you to include meta information and exclude “stop words,” which tend to appear often in a text (like “does,” “a,” “the,” and so forth). You can also set a minimum word length. That gives you the ability to only include words that meet a certain character count criteria.

### 3. Copywritely Keyword Density Checker

keyword density checker: copywritely
Copywritely’s keyword density checker shows your top keywords by density, and color codes terms that come up often. This tool is a bit more limited than the others in that it doesn’t give you an option to exclude stop words, not does it give you an option to include meta descriptions. But it is a great starter tool.

#### Why We Like It

Copywritely’s simplicity and user-friendliness makes it a good option if you’re looking for a quick, at-a-glance keyword density check. You then have the option of signing up for a Copywritely account to check and correct errors.

### 4. Semrush’s On-Page SEO Checker

keyword density checker: semrush
Semrush’s powerful on-page SEO checker includes a keyword density checker, named “keyword phrase usage” within the tool. Along with keyword density assessment, the tool includes automated SEO checkups and reports, assessments for titles and metadata, backlink prospecting tools, and in-depth site crawls, scans, and reports. It also helps you compare your keyword density with your competition’s. It does come at a premium price, starting at $119.95/month.

#### Why We Like It

Semrush isn’t just a keyword density checker, but a powerful SEO tool that can help you with all aspects of on-page SEO, including competitive comparison. You can learn how many times competitors user certain keywords. You can then get closer to their performance levels by adhering to the industry standard.

## Key(words) to the Kingdom

Want to improve your SERP position and boost site impact? Start with strong keywords.

The caveat? Keyword balance is key to search success. By finding — and regularly assessing — the keyword density of both specific pages and your site at scale, it's possible to boost relevant SEO impact and avoid the ranking pitfalls of overly-dense keyword distribution.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

## Don't forget to share this post!

## Related Articles

prevnext

- The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO in 2024

### The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO in 2024

Apr 04, 2024

- Hreflang Tags: The SEO Attribute for Content in Multiple Languages

### Hreflang Tags: The SEO Attribute for Content in Multiple Languages

May 11, 2022

- How to Write the Perfect Page Title With SEO in Mind

### How to Write the Perfect Page Title With SEO in Mind

May 04, 2022

- How To Write Meta Descriptions

### How To Write Meta Descriptions

Apr 28, 2022

- Header Tags: What They Are and How to Use Them

### Header Tags: What They Are and How to Use Them

May 13, 2021

- The Anatomy of a Search-Friendly URL [Infographic]

### The Anatomy of a Search-Friendly URL [Infographic]

Jun 20, 2016

- Want to Rank Better in Search? Avoid These 10 SEO Mistakes [Infographic]

### Want to Rank Better in Search? Avoid These 10 SEO Mistakes [Infographic]

Oct 26, 2015

- How to Easily Track Your On-Page SEO Strategy [Free Excel Template]

### How to Easily Track Your On-Page SEO Strategy [Free Excel Template]

Jul 08, 2015

- How a Good Content Strategy Can Repair Your SEO Problem

### How a Good Content Strategy Can Repair Your SEO Problem

Mar 27, 2015

- How to Optimize a PDF for Search

### How to Optimize a PDF for Search

Nov 17, 2011

## Join 600,000+ Fellow MarketersThanks for Subscribing!

Close

Exclusive interviews with industry leaders, and curated resources, to help you become a better marketer. Subscribe to Masters In Marketing below.

Email address*

Subscribe

We're committed to your privacy. HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our Privacy Policy.

Want to learn how to build a blog like this?

We started with one post.

Close

HubSpot Logo

Pop up forDOWNLOAD NOW: FREE SEO STARTER PACKFREE SEO STARTER PACK

Boost your website performance with this free 3-part starter pack.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE KIT
DOWNLOAD THE FREE KIT

Pop up forFREE MARKETING SOFTWAREFREE MARKETING SOFTWARE

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

BACK

## Popular Features

## Free Tools

## Company

## Customers

## Partners

Copyright © 2024 HubSpot, Inc.