While keyword density is really something SEOs should really stop paying attention to, keyword prominence is a concept that still should be analyzed and evaluated.
Keyword prominence can be analyzed by a key phrase usage in:
- the title of a page;
- meta description;
- H1 and H2 tags;
- Alt tags;
- Anchor text of both internal and external links;
- Bold and italic text;
- beginning of the body text;
- overall text.
You can perform this analysis manually by checking the page source, using all-in-one great tools (like RankSense discussed previously) or taking advantage of free online tools that have their own drawbacks but might be still useful nevertheless:
| Element to analyze: | Ranks | SEOworkers | RankQuest | Seoquake |
| Title tag | + | + | + | - |
| Meta Description | + | + | + | - |
| Headings |
+ | - | + | - |
| Alt tags | + | + | + | - |
| Anchor texts | + | + | + | - |
| Bold text | + | - | + | - |
| Italic text | + | - | - | - |
| Text | 1-, 2-, 3-word phrases | 1-, 2-, 3-word phrases | 1-, 2-, 3-word phrases | 1-, 2-, 3-, 4- word phrases |
Ranks Keyword Density and Prominence Tool analyzes a page most prominent 1-, 2- and 3-word phrases.
SEOworkers SEO Analysis Tool adds useful beginners’ recommendations (e.g. if the number of links on a page exceeds 100 or meta description is too long/short).
RankQuest Keyword Density Analyzer shows you results for the exact key phrase you specify (hence suitable only if you already know which keyword the page was optimized for).
Seoquake SEO toolbar Density Analyzer is best at exploring the body text only. While focusing on keyword density (the concept that is rather useless in a sense webmasters used to think of it), the tool is great for defining which phrases the page was optimized for.
Another great time saver Ann! Thanks for this post. You continue to provide me with great shortcuts. Definitely worth a Sphinn.
Hi Ann
From a Goog point of view you don’t need to worry about using keywords in the meta description; in fact I think it’s best not to use keywords there…
think of how the result looks in the results – keyword in title above snippet and keyword in url below it. I think it starts to look a bit spammy!
Hi Ann,
Good and simple write up! Does Search Engines still give importance to bold and Italic text?
Nice to the point post. I am not sure whether search engines give importance to bold text but I usually do ad some bold text in the content. Thanks for post!
Ann, I never used some techniques which You’ve specified. you’ve explained some good skill in keyword analysis.
but i will improve now, I guess Bold and Italics anchor texts can improve little bit effects in your on page optimization but not much.
We used seoquake so i would like Suggest you to use seoquake with firefox.
Thanks
Paul
@Gidseo – good but questionable point. Meta description doesn’t effect the rankings; what it does effect is clickthrough. I for one tend to click only those links that clearly use my search term in a snippet; so with me your method wouldn’t work…
@Mercy – I can’t be sure but I am inclined to think that they still do.
You so would click through – I’m not a great author but I take pride in my 155 character snippets!
:)
@Gidseo – Ok, I’ll take your word ;)
I concur with both of you Gidseo and Ann. My thoughts are that is always depending on what are the main purpose of that page or site, if it is an ecommerce or even an online store, guesses are that you should probably use something appealing to customers and even put some “call to action” phrase on the meta description. While having a site that provides information, it is better to use relative keywords and some relevant information on the meta description.
thanks
Thanks a lot!!!
Great article. Thank you very much Ann.
hi..
Please help me out My page are showing on yahoo but not shown in google.
Thanks a lot!!!
If you tried and liked the SEO Workers Analysis Tool, we have just published a nice Firefox Extension which you can analyze a web page with just a single click https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10455
Good Resource….
Excellent Tips. Thank you very much…
Great site! Thanks for the SEO tips! I will be back!
thank you for the information:-)
The ranks tool gives you also the possibility to exclude your meta keywords and description and a whole lot of other configuration options.
Personally I would exclude the meta keywords and description because these ar enot used for indexing.
What do you think Ann?
@Wouter you do not use the description meta tag? So you do not really care about conversions (CTR), right?