Google Keyword Density Analysis

Low Traffic Single Word Keywords

(Research Compiled 1/7/2004 by goRank.com)

Research Overview

There are many keyword density analysis tools on the Internet including our own goRank tool, but these tools are not very useful unless you know the optimum keyword density you are trying to achieve. The goal of this analysis is to help discover the right keyword density levels for the Google search engine to achieve top rankings. The top 10 results for over 2000 keywords were analyzed to create this report data covering over 20,000 data points. We decided to use single word keywords that have a small number of searches per month. These keywords are low traffic and likely non-competitive which should help to achieve a more accurate picture of how Google ranks pages. Each result URL was analyzed to produce a keyword density report, and the number of backlinks for each URL was checked. The results in this report have been compiled from this keyword density and backlink data. This data has also been put online in an interactive format using the interactive reporter. Using the interactive reporter you can customize the results and find the specific data you are interested in. Visit the interactive reporter page to query the database of results.

Note: Data can be interpreted in many ways, our goal is currently not to try to interpret the data, but rather we want to publish it and let others interpret the results. If you publish an interpretation please let us know as we may present it on our site. Any works that use the data presented here must give credit to goRank.com as the source and provide a link back to our site.

Averages

Average values for the number of words, repeats, and keyword density are interesting statistics and are presented in the table below. These values show a general average range of values for optimizing web pages. The table displays the breakout for several important page elements. The average number of backlinks is also displayed.

W=Words, R=Repeats, D=Density

Rank	All Words			Title			Link Text			Alt Text			Meta Keywords			Meta Description			Bold			H1 Tags			Back Links
	W	R	D	W	R	D	W	R	D	W	R	D	W	R	D	W	R	D	W	R	D	W	R	D
1	990	5.1	2.5%	5.9	0.8	20.0%	172	0.9	1.2%	22.4	0.3	1.6%	17.8	0.3	1.8%	9.8	0.2	2.2%	60.7	0.7	2.6%	1.7	0.2	4.6%	205
2	904	5.1	2.3%	6.6	0.8	17.6%	194	1.1	1.2%	21.5	0.3	1.4%	15.2	0.3	1.9%	9.3	0.2	2.3%	61.5	0.6	3.3%	1.3	0.1	3.9%	84
3	933	5.2	2.2%	6.5	0.8	17.0%	211	1.0	1.1%	22.2	0.2	1.2%	15.1	0.3	2.1%	10.0	0.2	2.2%	81.1	0.7	3.2%	1.7	0.2	4.5%	54
4	897	5.3	2.2%	6.6	0.8	17.1%	197	1.1	1.3%	19.5	0.3	1.5%	13.6	0.3	2.5%	9.3	0.3	2.3%	67.0	0.7	3.6%	5.0	0.2	4.7%	77
5	829	5.3	2.0%	6.8	0.8	16.3%	211	1.2	1.4%	23.6	0.2	1.7%	14.3	0.3	2.5%	10.3	0.2	2.6%	67.6	0.8	3.4%	1.5	0.2	5.1%	51
6	877	5.2	2.1%	6.8	0.8	16.8%	205	1.2	1.2%	19.6	0.2	1.2%	15.7	0.3	2.4%	9.9	0.2	2.4%	64.0	0.8	4.2%	1.4	0.2	5.3%	36
7	845	5.3	2.1%	6.7	0.8	17.5%	180	1.2	1.4%	19.5	0.3	1.5%	13.5	0.3	2.6%	10.3	0.3	2.7%	55.1	0.7	4.1%	8.3	0.2	5.1%	41
8	878	5.3	1.9%	6.8	0.8	17.4%	193	1.2	1.2%	18.6	0.2	1.0%	13.0	0.3	2.2%	9.6	0.2	2.3%	70.9	0.8	4.4%	1.7	0.2	5.6%	46
9	898	5.9	1.9%	6.9	0.8	16.5%	187	1.2	1.1%	20.9	0.3	1.3%	14.0	0.3	2.6%	9.7	0.3	2.5%	65.4	0.8	3.5%	4.1	0.2	5.4%	54
10	876	5.4	1.9%	7.0	0.8	16.3%	213	1.1	1.0%	20.7	0.3	1.5%	17.2	0.3	2.7%	10.4	0.2	2.4%	51.9	0.7	4.2%	2.0	0.2	5.7%	60
All	893	5.3	2.1%	6.7	0.8	17.3%	196	1.1	1.2%	20.9	0.3	1.4%	14.9	0.3	2.3%	9.9	0.2	2.4%	64.7	0.7	3.6%	2.9	0.2	5.0%	71

Analysis of Keyword Presence in Result URL

37% of all result URLs contained the keyword somewhere in the URL. 23% of URLs contained the keyword somewhere in the path. 1.7% of the URLs contained the keyword in the directories. 22% contained the keyword in the filename. 4% of the result URLs contained the keyword in a GET query. 10% of the result URLs contained the keyword in the domain.

Keyword Density Frequency Graphs

The graphs below are keyword density frequency graphs. On the X-axis, the keyword density percentage is displayed. On the Y-axis, the frequency of each keyword density occurrence is displayed. The frequency is a percentage value which shows the percentage of results that occurred at a specific keyword density relative to other keyword densities found. In all of the keyword density frequency graphs, the frequency percentage is calculated for all results with at least 1 occurrence of a keyword match. Results with 0% keyword density are not included.

All Words

Although the average keyword density for all words in the top ten results is 2.1%, over 40 percent of the results fall in the .5% - 1.5% keyword density range. There is a very sharp dropoff with very few results being listed in the top ten with more than a 5% keyword density.

Title

As you might expect, the keyword density of the page title plays a major role in rankings. The title has the largest keyword density average of all of the page elements evaluated. The graph below shows that more top ten results have a keyword density in the title of 20% than any other keyword density level.

Link Text

Link Text results show that 66% of the top ten results have a keyword density of less than 0.5%. Of the remaining 34%, there is a sharp drop off from 1% to 10% keyword density.

Alt Text

Alt Text results show that 87% of the top ten results have a keyword density of less than 0.5%. The remaining 13% of the results are spread out over a wide range. The largest concentration of alt text keyword density is in the 1% to 7% range.

Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords results show that 80% of the top ten results have a keyword density of less than 0.5%. The most frequent keyword density for the remaining results is 3%.

Meta Description

Meta Description results show that 78% of the top ten results have a keyword density of less than 0.5%. The results do not show any high peaks. The amount of results at a specific keyword density is fairly evenly divided from 2% up to 9% keyword density.

Bold

Bold Text results show that 67% of the top ten results have a bold text keyword density of less than 0.5%. The remaining results show a dramatic decrease from 1% to 10% with the peak frequency occurring at a 1% keyword density.

H1 Tags

H1 Tag Text results show that 84% of the top ten results have a keyword density of less than 0.5%. The remaining results show the top frequency occurs at a keyword density of 20%.

Additional Data with the Interactive Reporter

Discover the result data you are most interested in by using our interactive reporter. Visit the interactive reporter page to query the database of results. The interactive reporter requires a free goRank account, you will be prompted to signup for an account. Using the interactive reporter you can view data with filters for rank posistion and number of backlinks. This is interesting because you can use it to identify the characteristics of high ranking pages with a similar number of links to your page and no backlinks at all. You can also find the top 20 frequencies for the number of words in page elements. This can tell you for example that 15% of the #1 ranking results have 5 words in the title.

Conclusion

We are really just getting started on the analysis of Google. The data we have from this analysis includes many more interesting statistics than what we have presented here. We plan to add this additional data over time. If you would like to see specific data presented here that you think would be valuable please let us know. You can email us at info at gorank.com. We plan to do many more reports. Next up we will investigate two-word keyword phrases. If you would like to join our mailing list to be notified when we issue a new report please enter your email address below.


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