Keyword Density: How Much Is Too Much?
If you were to go back in time about 15 years you would notice that the online world was very different:
- Affiliate programs were just starting to appear.
- Search engines operated differently.
- Most people had no idea how to make a website.
- The internet was just a multi-million dollar economy (compared to the trillions of dollars that it is worth now).
Honestly, if you knew even a wee bit about SEO you could completely dominate the “old internet” because there was no SEO. Your website rankings depended on your meta tags, keywords, and keyword density. Hence, the thousands of websites that had paragraphs upon paragraphs of keywords at the bottom in small, hardly legible text.
Alas, those were the good old days. Today, SEO is a fine art that only a few people really appreciate. One important element of that art (or should I say, the most important element) is your content. I will beat to death the importance of qualified content because content is king (and always will be). Quality content will always trump any SEO trick in the book.
One thing that is still important is a relatively high keyword density. Maintaining a 2%-6% keyword density seems to be ideal at targeting specific keywords. In fact, next week I’m going to do a SEO challenge where I’m going to try to SEO for a relatively benign keyword only with content- no links, no redirects, no tricks. Just straight up content. Check back next Thursday for the article itself.
If you have a keyword density that is too high (10% or more) it is likely that your website is going to be penalized by Google (and the other top-tier search engines) for keyword stuffing. This effectively kills your ranks, as Google will label your website and flag it for lower quality than it “should be”, with the obvious negative impact on your rankings.
So, remember folks: don’t keyword stuff. Maintain a 2%-6% keyword density.
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