Keyword Density Checker Plugin Helps Avoid Over Optimization Penalty

SEOBook have a handy online tool for checking keyword density which will give you an idea of what keywords you have used the most in your content.

Why would you want to know this information? For both good & bad reasons as will be discussed during this post.

Another way to check the density of your keywords is to install a plugin.

Keyword Density Checker

What the plugin does is give you an idea of how dense your 1 word, 2 word & 3 word or phrase keyword density is so you know if you’re over doing it. This will help prevent the search engines slapping you with a penalty for keyword stuffing even though most of us are focused on writing quality content for our readers.

You can use this plugin to check all your existing content as well as the new content you produce.

Settings

Once you install the plugin, there’s only a few settings to configure. I didn’t make any changes to these and went with the default.

Once you have saved the settings, you’ll notice a panel below your edit post/page screen displaying the statistics.

Keyword Phrase Stats

Here you can keep an eye on the density of your keywords to make sure you aren’t stuffing your content to the point where you could be penalized by the search engines.

6.19 for this example is probably a bit high in my opinion but its only an example which will never be published. I think a target around 4% would keep you safe however you may want to watch a video on this subject made by Google themselves to work out your ideal percentage.

Google’s Keyword Stuffing Penalty

Matt Cutts who heads Google’s web spam team has recently released a statement saying Google has a new over optimization penalty (Penguin Update) built into the algorithm which targets excessive SEO.

Over use of keywords (keyword stuffing) can get you wiped out of the search results or a serious decrease in your rankings causing loss of traffic to your site, so be careful.

On the subject of Google and Seo penalties, how did you go with the latest 3 algorithm changes?

Good or bad, you are welcome to say whatever you like in the comments