What is keyword frequency?
As the name suggests, the term keyword frequency refers to the total number of times a focus keyword appears within a piece of web content.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What is the difference between keyword frequency and keyword density?
The main difference between keyword frequency and keyword density is that the former is presented as a single number while the latter is presented as a ratio or percentage.
Simply put, keyword frequency simply takes note of how many times a given keyword appears in a piece of content regardless of that piece of content’s length. In contrast, keyword density measures how many times a given keyword appears within a piece of content with respect to that piece of content’s length.
The formula for keyword density is the number of times a keyword is used / total number of words x 100.
So, for example, if you wrote a 1,000-word blog post about vlogging cameras and used the keyword ‘vlogging cameras’ 20 times, your keyword frequency would be 20 while your keyword density would be 2%
Question #2: How do I compute my keyword frequency?
There is no formula to compute your keyword frequency. All you have to do is count how many times your focus keyword appears in your content.
Question #3: What is the ideal keyword frequency?
There is no such thing as an ideal keyword frequency. You need to take into account the length of the piece of content in which they appear (i.e., keyword density).
Let us take the keyword ‘protein supplements’, for example. Using it five times in a 300-word article will yield very different results compared to using it five times in a 3,500-word article.
In the 300-word article, five times may be enough to tell Google that your content is actually about protein supplements. In contrast, in the 3,500-article, five times would probably not do anything. Google’s crawlers would most likely think that you just happen to use the terms five times and not give it any special meaning.
But what keyword density should you actually shoot for?
Well, since Google keeps changing its algorithm, there is really no way to zero in on a concrete number. But most SEO professionals (and SEO tools) believe that the sweet spot lies somewhere between 1% and 2%, so that should be a good range to be in.
In addition to fixing your keyword density, however, for even better results, you should also make sure to place your focus keywords in your content’s:
- Title
- Meta description
- Beginning your article
- H2 and H3 headers
- Image alt texts
Also, when incorporating your focus keyword in the main body of your blog or article, try to do so every 100-200 words. Spacing them out evenly makes it less likely for web crawlers to flag you for keyword spamming.
In addition, instead of stuffing your content with the same keyword over and over again, use latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords. These, in addition to your primary keywords, can help provide Google’s crawlers with more context about your content without making you seem as if you are deliberately trying to game Google’s search algorithm through keyword stuffing.
Question #4: Can keyword frequency improve my ranking and traffic?
Again, keyword frequency alone does nothing to improve your ranking and traffic. What you should be more concerned with is your keyword density, in addition to:
- The quality of your content
- The readability of your content (the goal is to keep them at a fifth or sixth-grade reading comprehension level)
- Your content’s load times
- Your use of latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords in addition to your focus keywords
- Your use of other media such as videos, photos, and audio
But even if you do all of this, there is still no guarantee that you will see amazing results right away. There is just too much content online right now that is constantly competing for your target audience’s attention. If you want to see results fast, you may want to consider exploring paid channels such as Google Ads and Facebook My Business as well.