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Keywords are a critical part of your SEO strategy.
Along with relevant content and optimized website design, ranking for the right keywords helps your site stand out from the crowd — and get closer to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).
So it’s no surprise that a substantial amount of SEO advice centers on keywords: Doing your research can help you select and rank for top-performing keywords in your market, in turn boosting user engagement and increasing total sales.
But how many keywords are enough? How many are too many? How do you know? And what happens if Google and other search engines determine your site is “stuffed” with keywords?
In our beginner’s guide to keyword density we’ll cover the basics, dig into why it matters, and offer functional formulas and simple tools that can help make sure your keyword strategies are working as intended.

What is keyword density?
Keyword density — also called keyword frequency — describes the number of times a specific keyword appears on a webpage compared to the total word count.
It’s often reported as a percentage or a ratio; the higher the value, the more your selected keyword appears on your page.
Why Keyword Density Matters
Keywords drive searches. When users go looking for products or services they’ll typically use a keyword that reflects their general intent, and expect search engines to serve up relevant results.
While tools like Google now take into account factors such as geographical area and page authority — defined in part by the number of visitors to your webpage and in part by “dofollow” links from reputable sites that link back to your page — keywords remain a critical factor in website success.
The caveat? You can’t simply “stuff” as many keywords as possible into your content and expect reliable results.
During the wild west days of the first search engines, brands and SEO firms would write low-value content and cram it with keywords and keyword tags, along with links to similarly-stuffed pages on the same site. Not surprisingly, visitors grew frustrated and search engine providers realized they needed a better approach.
Now, keyword stuffing has the opposite effect — search engines will penalize the page rankings of sites that still choose to keyword stuff.
By the Numbers: The Keyword Density Formula
How do you calculate keyword density? The formula is straightforward: Divide the number of times a keyword is used on your page by the total number of words on the page.
Here’s an easy example: Your page has 1,000 words and your keyword is used 10 times. This gives:
10 / 1000 = .001
Multiply this by 100 to get a percentage, which in this case is 1%.
There’s also another formula sometimes used to assess keyword usage: TF-IDF, which stands for “term frequency-inverse document frequency”. The idea here is to assess the frequency of a keyword on specific pages (TF) against the number of times this word appears across multiple pages on your site (IDF). The result helps determine how relevant your keyword is for specific pages.
While TF is straightforward, it’s easy to get sidetracked by IDF. Here, the goal is to understand the rarity of your keyword across multiple documents. IDF is measured in values between 0 and 1 — the closer to 0, the more a word appears across your pages. The closer to 1, the more it appears on a single page and no others.

This is the “inverse” nature of the calculation: lower values mean more keyword use.

Consider this formula in practice. Applied to very common words such as “the” or “but”, the TD-IDF score will approach zero. Applied to a specific keyword, the value should be much closer to 1 — if not, you may need to reconsider your keyword strategy.
Understanding Optimal Keyword Density
While there are no hard and fast rules for keyword density beyond always-relevant “don’t keyword stuff” advice, many SEOs recommend using approximately one keyword for each 200 words of copy.

Your content may perform similarly with slightly more or slightly less, but general wisdom holds that Google and other search engines respond well to keyword density around 0.5%.

It’s also worth remembering the value of keyword variants — words and phrases that are similar, but not identical, to your primary keyword. Let’s say your website sells outdoor lighting solutions. While your highest-value keyword for SERPs is “outdoor lighting”, stuffing as many uses of this keyword into as many pages as possible will reduce rather than improve overall SEO.
Instead, consider keyword variants; terms that are close to your primary keyword but not an exact copy. In the case of “outdoor lighting”, variants such as “garden lighting”, “patio lighting”, “deck lighting” or “landscape lighting” can help your page rank higher without running afoul of keyword-stuffing rules.
Not sure what variants make the most sense for your website? Use the “searches related to” section at the bottom of Google’s SERP for your primary keyword. Here’s why: Google has put significant time and effort into understanding intent, so the “searches related to” section will show you similar terms to your primary keyword.
Keyword Density Tools
While you can do the math on keyword density yourself by calculating the total word and keyword counts across every page on your website, this can quickly become time- and resource-intensive as your website expands and page volumes increase.
Keyword density tools help streamline this process. Potential options include:
1. SEO Review Tools Keyword Density Checker

This free tool is browser-based — simply input your site URL or page text, then complete the “I’m not a robot” captcha to perform a keyword density check. While this tool doesn’t offer the in-depth analytics of other options on the list, it’s a great way to get an overview of current keyword density.
2. SEOBook Keyword Density Analyzer

Similar to the tool above, the SEOBook Keyword Density Analyzer is free — but it does require an account to use. Along with basic keyword density reports, this tool also lets you search for your target keyword in Google, pull data for five of the top-ranked pages using the same keyword, then analyze them to see how your keyword stacks up.
3. WordPress SEO Post Optimizer

If you’d prefer a WordPress plugin for keyword density assessment, consider the WordPress SEO Post Optimizer. This tool comes with a cost — $19 — but checks a host of SEO conditions including keyword density to help ensure your content can rank highly on the SERPs.
4. WPMUDEV SmartCrawl

Another WordPress pluging, WPMUDEV SmartCrawl is free for seven days and then costs $5 per month. Along with keyword density assessment the tool includes automated SEO checkups and reports, assessments for titles and metadata along with in-depth site crawls, scans and reports.
Key(words) to the Kingdom
Want to improve your SERP position and boost site impact? Start with strong keywords.
The caveat? Keyword balance is key to search success. By finding — and regularly assessing — the keyword density of both specific pages and your site at scale, it’s possible to boost relevant SEO impact and avoid the ranking pitfalls of overly-dense keyword distribution.

Connecting with potential customers is critical to boost interest in your website and drive sales conversions.
But this is often easier said than done — while many site owners understand the value of compelling content, creating copy that resonates with visitors is more complicated than it appears.
Here’s why: Gone are the days of keyword-stuffed content designed only to drive up SEO values. When it comes to successful website marketing and sales campaigns, action is the driving force.
But with the typical consumer now owning and using at least three digital devices on average, the amount of time content has to make an impact is diminishing quickly.
To both boost up-front engagement and encourage immediate action, many businesses are leveraging a new approach: Direct response copywriting.
In this piece, we’ll dive into direct response copywriting details, offer some actionable examples and provide six tips to help boost the benefits of direct response copywriting.

What is direct response copywriting?
Direct response copywriting is all about right now. It’s about inspiring consumers to action the moment they’re done reading your copy.
As a result, successful direct response content creators are highly valued (and well-paid) professionals since they’re able to generate significant return on investment (ROI) for organizations.
They accomplish this aim by combining a deep understanding of target markets with substantial writing skills to create copy that evokes emotional or logical responses from readers.
From understanding key pain points to highlighting immediate needs or offering specific solutions, direct response copywriting done right delivers familiarity and personalization combined with market knowledge and authority to create a sense of trust.
While your specific aim may vary, direct response copywriting typically focuses on actions such as:

Purchasing an item or service
Signing up for email newsletters or product updates
Downloading free resources such as e-guides or whitepapers
Following brands on social media sites

Metrics are critical to ensure direct copywriting is having the desired effect. These may include total sales volumes, new email list sign-ups, the number of times resources are downloaded, or the uptick in total followers on social sites like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
When it comes to creating direct response copywriting, businesses have two options: in-house or outsourced.
While in-house content creation may offer up-front cost savings, the highly targeted nature of direct deliverables comes with a steep learning curve — initial efforts may not have the intended effect if they’re too generalized or fail to strike the right balance between authority and accessibility.
Alternatively, while best-of-breed direct response copywriting services aren’t cheap, they can often deliver ROI between 5X and 10X their initial cost.
Direct Response Copywriting Examples
So what does direct response copywriting look like in practice? Let’s break down a few examples.
1. Fizzle

This banner is from Fizzle, which provides resources for entrepreneurs. It speaks to the fundamental nature of these self-starter businesses: Earning a living that isn’t tied to traditional corporate or retail frameworks and that brings a sense of personal satisfaction.
The copy is short, targeted, and to-the-point and encourages immediate action to click-through and see what the company has to offer.
2. Dropbox

File service Dropbox has made significant enterprise in-roads by offering streamlined and secure collaboration.
Here, their direct response copy makes their value proposition abundantly clear: Users can collaborate on anything, anytime, anywhere. It speaks to the pain points experienced by main companies trying to find collaborative common ground and offers Dropbox as the simplest solution.
3. MailChimp

This direct response copy is from automation platform MailChimp. It offers four key benefits laid out in an easy-to-read format, along with more in-depth details and links below.
For companies looking to improve customer connections, boost brand impact, or get more from their data, MailChimp’s copy makes it clear they can help — and makes it easy for companies to take the first step.
Six Direct Response Copywriting Tips
Here’s the hard truth: With customers now inundated by online advertisements across multiple platforms and devices, it’s hard for content to stand out. As a result, companies need direct response copywriting that is immediately engaging and compelling — and that’s no easy task.
Here are six direct response copywriting tips to boost your in-house efforts or help you evaluate the potential copy providers.
1. Know your market.
Understanding your target audience is key for any copywriting, but it’s fundamental for direct response efforts.

For content to compel action, readers need to feel like copywriters “get” them — that they understand their specific pain points, and can offer immediately applicable solutions.

This is by far the most labor-intensive step of the process, but is well worth the effort.
2. Start strong.
The first thing prospective customers see when they look at your copy? The headline. If it doesn’t grab attention, chances are prospective purchasers won’t read the rest of your content and you won’t compel action. Headlines should reference the reader directly with “you” statements or questions — done well, headlines can stand on their own as effective actionable content.
Worth noting? If a great headline doesn’t present itself immediately, try writing the rest of the copy first, since this may help you find the best first-line fit. It’s also a good idea to walk away from your content for a few days after you’re done — if it doesn’t have the same impact when you look again, consider making changes.
3. Apply AIDCA were possible.
AIDCA stands for “attention, interest, conviction, desire and action.” Ideally, you want all five in your copy. Start with an attention-grabbing headline, then drive interest with a compelling product or service hook.
If you’re creating longer-form copy, conviction can take the form of a customer testimonial or review, but this isn’t necessary for quick-hitter content.
Desire speaks to your value proposition — why would customers want your product or service? Action is your goal; make it clear what you’re looking for and provide direct links.
4. Ask for action.
While your direct response copywriting content should always end with a call-to-action (CTA), it’s also a good idea to reinforce this idea two or three times throughout your content.
Best bet? Always start and end with a call-to-action and include another actionable mention in the middle of longer copy.
5. Prioritize the second person.
Effective direct response copywriting centers on the consumer, not the company. As a result, businesses are best-served by prioritizing the second person with “you” statements and questions that speak to readers directly.
While “I” and “we” statements might offer great insight about your company, its processes or its current accolades, these first-person pronouns won’t encourage action. 
Simply put? “You” is the fastest way to “yes”.
6. Write fast, edit hard.
Overthinking direct response copywriting can slow the process and hamper overall effectiveness. Why? Because this action-driven framework demands a unique combination of instinct and information to create compelling content.
Instead, companies should take a write fast, edit hard approach: Draft content quickly to establish key themes and pinpoint critical outcomes, then edit ruthlessly to eliminate extraneous words. Direct response copywriting isn’t about literary loquaciousness — it’s about crisp, clear, compelling content that connects with your target audience.
And … Action!
The ultimate goal of direct response copywriting? Connecting with your audience to drive immediate action. It’s no easy task — but by knowing your market, starting strong, applying AIDCA, asking for action, prioritizing the second person, and editing with intention it’s possible to create content that delivers reliable consumer response on-demand.

Have a website? Then you’ve likely heard about search engine optimization (SEO) — the process of making your site easier to find, crawl, and rank for search engines.
The better your SEO, the higher your website ends up on search engine ranking pages (SERPs) — as a result, the greater the chance of your site being noticed by potential customers.
And with 68% of all website traffic coming from organic and paid searches — rather than through social media shares and other marketing channels — the right SEO strategy is critical.

Many SEO techniques are straightforward: Don’t keyword stuff. Keep your content relevant. Improve your website’s user experience (UX) by cutting complexity and boosting speed. But other metrics also matter.
Case in point? Redirect chains. These interconnected Internet issues cause problems for search engine spiders, frustration for users, and potential problems for your page ranking.
But what exactly is a redirect chain? Why is it potentially problematic? And how do you find and remove these unintentional website course corrections? Here’s what you need to know.
Learn about what web optimization is and how to do it with this free course. 

What is a redirect chain?
A redirect chain occurs when there’s more than one redirect between the initial link users click on and the eventual destination page.
There are two common types of redirects: 301 and 302.
301 redirects happen when the destination page permanently links to a new URL and 302 redirects point to temporary pages while new content is created or websites are built. From an SEO perspective, both are treated the same.
Consider a backlink from a reputable site that leads to a page on your site, which we’ll call URL A. If users click on the link and are taken directly to URL A, it’s considered to be a single 301 redirect. Perfect.
But what happens if the content on URL A needs a refresh? You update the content with URL B, then set URL A to redirect users to the new page. This causes a redirect chain — your backlink leads to URL A which redirects to URL B. Add new pages and the chain gets longer and longer, and longer…
Two Reasons for Redirects
In most cases, redirect chains are unintentional, and they typically happen for one of two reasons:
1. Content Updates
Since changing backlinks on other sides isn’t easy — you’d need to get in contact with the site owner, ask them to amend the link, and hope they have the time to do so — it’s often quicker to simply redirect the initial backlink to a new URL. As websites grow and content changes, however, the number of steps between the initial click and eventual destination can increase dramatically.
2. URL Specifics
Redirect chains also occur when businesses rapidly scale up their website and small issues with URL specifics turn into larger redirect problems. For instance, consider the URL:
http://www.yoursite.com/products
Since it lacks the https now expected for secure website browsing, you update the URL to:
https://www.yoursite.com/products
This creates a redirect, but there’s another issue — no trailing slash after “products”. So what happens? You amend the URL again:
https://www.yoursite.com/products/
The result? You’ve gone from one to three redirects with only minor changes. Combined with new content generation and applied to your site at scale, it’s easy to see how redirects can quickly get out of hand.

The Negative SEO Impact of Redirect Chains
What’s the big problem with redirect chains, anyway? Since the links point users and search engine crawlers in the right direction, what does it matter if it takes a few extra steps?
As is turns out, large redirect chains can significantly impact your spot in SERPs for three reasons:
1. Link Juice Loss
The “boost” your site gets from reputable backlinks is often called “link juice” — the more juice you get, the better for your search rankings.
With just one redirect from a backlink to your site, you get 100% of the juice. Add another 301 redirect and you’re getting (on average) about 85% of the link juice. Add another and you get 85% of 85%, or just over 72%. The more links, the less juice.
2. Reduced Site Performance
It makes sense: The longer the chain, the more time it takes your destination page to load as browsers work their way through link after link. And with site performance now a critical factor in boosting SEO, more redirects mean lower rankings for your page.
3. Crawling Concerns
Search engine bots will only crawl so much before giving up. Called their “crawl budget”, most smaller websites don’t need to worry about search spiders spending their entire budget before reaching the end of the site — unless redirects start to ramp up.
The bigger and more numerous your redirect chains, the longer it takes for search engines to reach the end. Eventually, they’ll just stop looking.
Also worth mentioning are redirect loops. Here, initial links lead to URL A, then URL B and the URL C, and then back to URL A — causing a loop. Eventually, browsers stop redirecting and users end up with no content. Not surprisingly, your SEO suffers.

How to Find Redirect Chains
While you could go through your site manually and evaluate every page, every link, and every redirect, this is both time and resource-intensive — especially if you’re in the middle of site expansion or rolling out a new content strategy.
Best bet? Use online redirect checker tools to determine where your links are working as intended and where they create potentially problematic chains. Some popular solutions include:
1. Redirect-checker.org

Simply type in your http:// or https:// URL to discover any 301 or 302 redirects for a specific page. This free tool is great if you’re only worried about specific URLs but isn’t ideal for checking your entire site.
2. Sitebulb

Sitebulb delivers a host of reports that evaluate how crawl-friendly your site is, where redirect issues exist, and how links are distributed across your site. Sitebulb offers a 14-day free trial followed by a monthly subscription model.
3. Screaming Frog

The SEO Spider from Screaming Frog lets you find broken links, audit link redirects, and discover duplicate content. SEO Spider comes in both free and paid versions — the biggest difference is that the free version will only crawl 500 URLs while the paid version offers unlimited redirect reports.
4. DeepCrawl

DeepCrawl bills itself as the “world’s best website crawler” and offers three plans: Light, Light Plus, and Enterprise. The Light plan is designed for one project and 10,000 URLs per month, while Light Plus offers 40,000 URLs, and Enterprise comes with unlimited redirect reconnaissance.

How to Remove a Redirect Chain
Once you’ve found redirect chains, removing them is straightforward — simply change the redirect link of the first destination page to the final URL rather than pointing it toward another redirect.
In practice, this means changing the redirect of URL A, in our example above, to URL C rather than URL B — in turn, skipping the middle step and ensuring your site doesn’t lose any link juice or SEO ranking. If URL B is still backlinked by other sites, you can leave its redirect to URL C intact. If it only exists as a bridge between the older URL A and the newer URL C, it’s worth removing redirects entirely and deleting or archiving the page.
Remember — every 301 redirect after the initial jump costs your site approximately 15% of potential link juice. Fill your SERP cup by cutting down redirects wherever possible.
How to Prevent Redirect Chains
To prevent redirect chains from building up over time, it’s worth regularly checking your site with redirect tools like those mentioned above. It’s also a good idea to keep a record of new URLs as they’re created — either by using a shared spreadsheet or by leveraging automated tools for this purpose — to help ensure that new URLs are connected to the first 301 redirect rather than those further down the chain.
Breaking Bad (Chains)
Although it’s not possible to entirely avoid redirect chains from backlinks and other dofollow sources, SEO starts to suffer the longer these chains become. Best bet? Use robust redirect tools to find long-tail chains, break them into smaller pieces wherever possible, and develop URL management frameworks to reduce redirect risks.

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