Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important, albeit tedious, task for any blogger or website owner. Without a good search engine optimization strategy, it is extremely difficult for search engines to index and more importantly for visitors to find your website or articles. It is a well known fact that most information seeking visitors will click links on the first page of any search engine results. Some may dig deep into search engine results pages 2, 3, and later, although they are in the minority.
One of the most important aspects of good search engine optimization is choosing good keywords (words that reflect the content of your article AND that people actually type in search engines). Of course, choosing good keywords is only part of the battle. You should also consider the level of competition from other sites, their PR ranking, the strength of the backlinks, the age of the domain, and the quality of their content.
Another important keyword consideration is keyword density and article length. What is keyword density? Keyword density is the metric of how often your particular keywords appear within your article. Placing these important keywords in your article title, meta keywords, tags, meta description, image names, and alt text, and judicious use of heading tags complete the necessary steps to ensure your articles rank well in search engine results.
But how do you measure keyword density?
One of my favorite tools for measuring the keyword density of online content is a Firefox plugin called SEO Quake. With it, I can check the keyword count of my own articles and posts or those of competitor sites, which in turn allows me to modify my own articles in an attempt to get a better placement in the results of the engines. search.
The downside to using SEO Quake is that your content must already be published and live before it can work its magic. A much better approach would be to measure the keyword density of your article from your Windows desktop before publishing it online.
I personally use Windows Live Writer to publish my articles on my websites, but I usually start by typing everything in Microsoft Word. As powerful as Microsoft Word is, a tool that web editors and bloggers like you and I lack is the one that would enable metrics and keyword density analysis.
Fortunately, there are some capable applications specifically designed for the task of measuring keywords in text files on the Windows desktop. The following are 3 extremely capable keyword density tools for desktop use, and best of all, they’re free!
E3KWD Check 3.0 Keyword Analysis Tool
e3KWD Check 3.0 is a light, fast and free program for analyzing the density of keywords in text and web documents, written for Windows platforms (95/98/2000 / NT / ME / XP / Vista).
This tool allows you to run real-time analysis tasks on your local copy while writing or editing. If you have an active internet connection, it will also retrieve and analyze web documents online using the built-in address bar.
Pazintys Keyword Density Tool
Pazintys Keyword Density Tool is an especially small, light and simple application for calculating the density of words in text files.
Text keyword density has a critical impact on search engine optimization (SEO) and determining your placement on search engine results pages.
Pazintys requires no installation and at just 30 KB, it can easily fit and run from your USB flash drive.
Duplication and Density Checker
The Duplication and Density Checker is another 30 Second Smile desktop analysis tool.
This simple piece of software is a two-edged sword, as it can perform two very important tasks for content creation.
This software will run on your desktop and will allow you to compare two articles for duplicate content and will also allow you to quickly see the keyword density of your text files.