In the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), using the proper, well-placed, and well-researched keywords can make a lot of difference in how a site ranks over Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).
Site optimization is a dedicated task that requires a proper strategy. This strategy involves keyword density, proximity, frequency, and prominence.
In the context of SEO, these terms are explained in the content that follows:
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a webpage as compared to the total number of words on that page.
For instance, if a webpage has 400 words and a particular keyword appears 20 times, then the keyword density of that particular word is 5 percent. A conservative range of keyword density could be around 2-5% and may not exceed 10%.
It is always advantageous to put the keyword in the title, description, H1 Tag. The keyword can be spread throughout the text of the webpage but should be placed that it makes sense and appears natural in the context.
Keyword Frequency
Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or a phrase appears on a webpage. It is generally theorized that having a keyword number of times on a webpage gets more relevance from a Search Engine. It means the page would rank high on SERP.
But a general caution is needed that a keyword or a key phrase is not repeated too much on a webpage. Otherwise, the search engine might take it as a spam technique or as a case of keyword stuffing. This might affect the page rank in search engine results.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence tells about the prominence of the keywords which are used on a webpage.
In simpler words, it means how close to the beginning of the webpage, sentence, title, Header tag or Meta description are our keywords placed. If possible one should try to place the keywords close to these elements or portions of a webpage.
Handling keyword prominence right would give us the advantage of better SERP rankings, a higher crawl rate, and better-looking snippets in SERPs.
One can use an inverted pyramid writing structure to achieve better keyword prominence; in this, use the first paragraph as a short summary of the content to follow. In this first paragraph, keywords could be included appropriately.
Keyword Proximity
A search query could be a single word or it could be a combination of various words. Keyword proximity is the distance between the search term’s individual keywords. To understand it better, let us take an example.
Suppose a user enters “Mumbai Professional Chef” as a query on a Search Engine. A website contains such keywords in the sentence “Mumbai Chef John Q. Specializes in professional culinary arts”.
The search term proximity between “Mumbai” and “Chef is zero words, which is a good thing, but the proximity between “Chef” and “professional” is four words.
The smaller distance between a search term (as entered by a user) individual keywords (which might match with some text or sentence on some website) means more relevant would be the content from a search engine’s point of view.
Keywords that have proximity on a webpage matches to a good extent to a search engine query; then these webpages are likely to rank better in a search result.
