How Often Should Keywords Appear On Your Page?
I just did a test on another site to see if I could identify a sweet spot in the amount of times a keyword is repeated. From other tests I have looked at I think a perfect keyword density sweet spot is clearly a myth. but keyword prominence/repetition/stuffing is clearly – not.
I got the idea when I was looking at a slide by Google employees where they mention in simple terms how Google ranks a page and I quote:
How well it matches – How often keywords appear
Is it really “easier than you think?” 
My test consisted of
- 15 pages of text
- 2 keyword phrases (real words, not made up)
- On each consecutive page I removed an instance of the word and introduced a new word (so I could do the same test backwards in case any document date modified came into play)
- I waited for Google to spider, and searched for my 2 different terms
The results (I can’t illustrate this one)
Google picked the 2 keyword stuffed pages at either end of the test to rank for the desired terms (and ranked them number 1). By the way, the KD of those pages for the phrases were 18.64% just to let you see there’s clearly no optimal keyword density.
No wonder keyword stuffing is against Google guidelines – it works.
I wonder if different keyword verticals (loans, injury claims, online betting) have different boundaries that can be breached and penalised.
Keyword stuffing is cleary against Google guidelines – so I wouldn’t recommend you do it. I repeat – be careful. I do prefer to keep it as natural as possible because ultimately it’s about your incoming backlinks and your domain authority.
Just make sure you’re aware of one thing Google is looking for:
How often keywords appear
Written by Shaun Anderson
Hi Shaun, Google for Google consultant and see what Susannah does to rank for the term. She makes her point!
BB
@ The SME SEO – if you read on down the page you refer to, you’ll see she keyword stuffed it on purpose, to make a point.
Are you saying the pages with a keyword density of 18.64% ended up ranking #1 ..?!
Damn. It would be very difficult to make content that dense and still be both readable and appear to be an innocent coincidence. (ie. not intentionally stuffed).
That’s crazy. But thanks very much for doing the test – very interesting.
An interesting little presentation there. Saved a copy of that for later
I always wondered about keywords and repeating them on a page and having them too many times on a page
Say for example i have a page title with red ballons edinburgh | green yoyos edinburgh
Does google only take pay attention to the first edinburgh, or ignore the 2nd one, or count them both? Is it considered keyword stuffing?