Keyword Density vs LSI: Which One is More Important and Why?

Although Google doesn’t have any established mandate for such a percentage, it is however considered a higher percentage of keyword density might not go down well with Google and could be considered as a manipulative technique.

From time immemorial, web marketers and search engines optimizers around the world have been harping on the significance of content optimization for higher rankings on search engines. Among other considerations for optimized content, maintaining an ideal keyword density is perceived as the best practice among search marketers.

Whether you write an article or a sales copy, a 3% keyword density is considered ideal for search engine optimization. Although Google doesn’t have any established mandate for such a percentage, it is however considered a higher percentage of keyword density might not go down well with Google and could be considered as a manipulative technique.

Does Keyword Density Really Matter?

This is an interesting question. A lot of webmasters often wonder if the 3% keyword density is a good practice or just too conservative an approach to secure full benefits of keyword optimization for search engines.

The practice of optimizing the page content until you achieve the 3% density seems to be an established practice although no one really knows if this mandate still holds good today and adds any value to a website’s overall optimization model.

According to the leaders in the global search industry, the drastic evolution in Google’s search engine algorithms over the years, has devalued the role keyword density once used to command in a website’s content optimization practices.

So What’s The Best Practice Now?

Google no longer measure the keyword density as an important metric to weigh a webpage’s value. Thanks to the Google’s evolving algorithms and considerations for better search results, optimizing your content for multiple relevant search queries can be more beneficial now. Technically speaking, the concept of Latent Semantic Indexing commands more importance from Google as a part of the best practices in content optimization.

LSI essentially consists of using a set of keywords or keyword phrases that have semantic relevance with one another. For example, if an article is written for the keyword “vacuum cleaner” , it is essential to consider using words that are synonymous with it as well. Therefore, you can take “hoover” as well. Likewise, a web page about golf, when analyzed using LSI, should expect to contain related words, such as “cart”, “clubs”, “courses”, “green”, “fairway” etc.

The reason behind such a practice being encouraged by Google is that using synonyms enhances the page being found for relevant search queries for a particular term, which eventually helps the searchers.

Google’s journey into LSI began when it bought “Applied Semantics”, a company whose software was being used to organize information from websites in a manner similar to the way humans would do. The move was strategically meant to support Google’s Adwords product development. Ever since, the content optimization model has shifted from “keywords” to “themes”. Therefore, if you’re optimizing your article or sale copy for a particular keyword, you should offer more importance to LSI approach than a specific keyword density.

About Susanta Sahoo

I'm the founder and content marketing head at Top League. Our team can help you build great content that helps you rank high on Google and generate high-quality leads. Get in touch with us and let's discuss your project. I'm on LinkedIn & Twitter, just so you know.

Reader Interactions

1 Reaction

  1. kalandi

    Google no longer measure the keyword density as an important metric to weigh a webpage’s value. absolutely right statement but both are requirement basically keyword synonymous using in an article.