Keyword Density

In the late 1990s, when search engines were in their infancy, some people discovered that it was very easy to influence search engine rankings. Along with a couple of other measures, repeating a keyword would cause you to rank higher for that keyword.

Since the Internet has become some sort of an echo-chamber, we can still read ecommerce SEO advice about repeating keywords. Some have tried to turn it into a precise science by recommending exact numbers for keyword density percentages. For instance, I have read that a keyword density of 2% is ideal, while 7% might be too high.

At the bottom of this article, I have explained how keyword density is computed. For now, just keep in mind that the traditional notion of keyword density is dead. And it has been dead since the early 2000s.

How Keyword Density Is Supposed to Work for Ecommerce SEO; But Doesn't
The basic idea of keyword density is quite obvious. If one keyword is repeated more often in the description of a specific product, it is likely that the webpage is related to that keyword. So when a user searches for that keyword, the search engine is doing the user a favor by listing the keyword-dense page on its results page.

I guess you can sense some irony in the line of reasoning above. Indeed, it is foolish to assume that search engines would be so naive. There might have been a time when this was true, but that time is long gone.

Why Keyword Stuffing Is a Sin
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of repeating keywords in excess of natural usage. It is a bad idea because of two reasons:

1. Search Engines Hate It
   With over a decade of professional ecommerce SEO experience, I can confidently state that I have not seen keyword stuffing work in the past couple of years. The few instances where it seems to work is for search terms that are highly uncompetitive, i.e., almost no one is searching for them. In these rare cases, your product description page might truly be the most relevant result.
   
   The only influence of keyword stuffing that I have noticed on ecommerce websites is a negative influence. If your ecommerce website, or some of the specific pages on the website, trip a "spam trigger," it might lead to lowering search rankings. Ecommerce businesses that systematically attempt to stuff keywords, at all available opportunities, are often hit hard by spam penalties on search engines.
   
   
2. Shoppers Hate It
   Search engines hating keyword stuffing should be enough to discourage you from this blackhat practice. But the fact that shoppers hate it should put paid to any misplaced notions that you might have about fooling search engines. Why do people hate keyword stuffing you ask? Quite simple: keyword stuffed product descriptions sound horrible.

How Do You Indicate the Relevance of Your Page for a Specific Keyword?
If keyword stuffing is out, what do you do? Is there such a thing as SEO copywriting? Luckily, the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

Understandably, every ecommerce business would like to write their product descriptions in a way that would clearly indicate to search engines that the webpage is related to some specific keyphrases. Go ahead and read my article about SEO copywriting to learn about using related terms and natural language to send signals to search engines.

How Do You Compute Keyword Density?
If you have a 500-word article, and you want to maintain a 2% keyword density, you would repeat the keyword 10 times. That is calculated as (2 ÷ 100) × 500 = 10. I am explaining this computation only to illustrate what people mean when they suggest specific measures of keyword density, and not because I advocate such pseudo-science.