What keyword density does my content need?

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The ideal number of keywords in relation to the total number of words in an article has been a relevant topic since SEO became indispensable. But there are still gaps in information to determine exactly the optimal percentage of keywords for a content.

Ideal keyword density according to experts

Shaun Anderson, SEO Manager at Hobo Web, took the time to interview the benefits of using our teacher database some of the world's top SEO Managers in order to answer this question. The results of his interview were concrete:

There is no optimal percentage of keywords.

Regardless of whether the content is generated in WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or any other CMS, most modern search engines do not give much importance to the number of keywords when ranking pages. They simply take into account that they appear naturally and are of quality, among other factors such as title tags, headings and the quality of the links.

They don't say that they shouldn't be used; it would be absurd to think about positioning without their inclusion, but they are emphatic in stating that their use should be moderate. Excessive keywords are harmful not only because it is a practice penalized by Google, but because a text of these characteristics is of poor quality and goes against all the principles of SEO and content marketing .

Ideal keyword density according to Google



In this interesting video, Matt Cutts (Director of Google's WebSpam department) explains that keywords serve the search engine to identify the type of content that a page is delivering, but they are not the determining factor in defining the position of the site. To do so, it takes into account, among other parameters, the following:

Qualification.
Description.
Structure.
Headings: H1, H2, H3, etc.
Phrases in bold and italics.
Google's algorithm classifies an article as relevant when it finds the keywords in the content once or twice, although there are better results when finding them three times. But if they appear in an exaggerated, unjustified manner and in an illogical order, the search engine will take into account other factors such as the quality of the domain and its age, the authority of the site, internal and external links, associated partners , organic traffic and other variables that can send the site to the last results.

However, this is the case in the best of cases. A very high keyword density is classified by Google as “keyword abuse”, a behavior that goes against its policies and conditions, and is therefore penalized with a loss of visibility on the web, which is difficult to recover from even when using the most effective and cutting-edge SEO strategies .

In conclusion

There is no ideal percentage of keywords to rank #1 in search results, although it is recommended that they do not appear more than three times. Tasty and unethical texts like the following only lead to negative consequences:

“Keywords are the most important thing for search engine positioning. Without quality keywords and a high density, it is impossible to rank a site in the first places. Therefore, keywords play a very important role and should correspond to 7% of the total words in the article…”

The best way to position a site is by combining different SEO techniques with content in which the keywords are of quality and do not appear repeatedly and unjustifiably. They should be presented naturally and replaced by synonyms that avoid their excessive use and open the possibility of positioning with less competitive terms. In any case, it is not a bad idea to use tools to measure the density of keywords before publishing each article.