Google Adwords

The Keyword Density Myth

There is more to keyword relevancy than a simple mathematical equation, or how many times a word or phrase appears on a landing page and website, but also where and how keywords are used.

Many websites, and bloggers, put forth the notion, that how many times a word appears on a page, will significantly impact whether that keyword is relevant to the page, or not. This is a completely false premise, and based solely on a mathematical equation known as “keyword density”.

While keyword density can help when in comes to content writing, in determining whether you've over/under used a word or phrase, it doesn't represent the importance some profess it does, when it comes to ranking websites, or scoring landing pages in Adwords.

For example, keyword density is helpful to determine the quality of the content writing, or the impact of ones message to it's visitors, but it does not constitute a basis in which a search engine, such as Google, rates the actual quality of a page - it instead, aids in the determine of quality, among many other factors and considerations.

Strategic Keyword Placement Is The Key

If there is a mathematical equation for keyword relevance, and I suspect there has to be, considering the discussion topic of an automated, robotic system, that equation links relevance based on a “power ranking”. Not just how often a word is found, but what does it mean to a page, or website ?

Is a word more important, depending on where, and how it's used, and under what context ? The answer is yes.

The following circumstances can help you determine just how relevant a word is to your domain, and it's pages. A considerably relevant result for any keyword is a result where the follow conditions exist.

However, those elements are just a beginning, a base to start from, as the Adwords system, doesn't just examine each keyword, and how each relates, separately, to a domain or page, but also how a keyword relates to other keywords found. Does the content found on the page relate to the keywords determined to be most important ? Or, is the advertiser haphazardly inserting words or phrases, in the hopes those words or phrases will merit a higher score ? In other words, does the page make sense to someone viewing and reading it ? That's the challenge for the Adwords system.

You will find, that if you naturally accentuate words or phrases, common to your products or service, using the proper HTML structure, such as using the names of pages, titles of pages, and headings, you will end up with more relevant content, and higher scores.

What's more, by highlighting these words or phrases more prominently, you will also earn more sales leads, and conversions, as a result.

What Campaign Adjustments Can Be Made To Improve Scores ?

Many new advertisers only create one or two ads, while using too many keywords, in too broad a context, assuming that relevancy scores are largely a result of what can be found on their landing page and website. While what the context of keywords found on your site does have an impact, whether the keywords appear in your ads, and how you are matching keywords are just as important.

Understanding match types - broad, phrase, and exact - can help you focus your ad and landing page strengths, and weaknesses. Broad keyword matches should be used with caution as each word in a broad match are loosely associated. For instance, a broad keyword match of “ catering business ” will not just display ads about catering, but about catering and business in general, which is not likely to produce the kind of relevant visitors you'd be looking for.

Adwords provides you with a great deal of flexibility when it comes to the type of keywords chosen, and under what circumstances your ad will appear. For a more in depth study on how to improve keyword relevance, read our Building an Adwords Campaign Tutorial, that will help to clear up some of the mystery involving keyword scores, and why they are rated as they are.