Keyword density: Recommended keyword density

[ablaye]

I read somewhere that you should repeat at least 3 times your targeted keywords in the body of your website.
I was wondering if there is an upper limit on how much you can repeat your keywords before they start hurting you with the search engines (i.e. the search engines discard them as spam).
Anyone here knows????

[sixty6]

You shouldn't keyword stuff, if that's what you're suggesting...Just let things come naturally and there is no minimum amount considering the fact that Google is now being protected against keyword stuffing..

[etech-peter]

I think the recommended keyword density is from 3 to 7%, anything above this, say 10% density starts to look very much like keyword stuffing. Too much keyword density can cause your site to be tagged as spam.

[John Scott]

Don't worry too much about keyword density. I've seen sites with 90% keyword density ranking fine in Google and elsewhere.

[BamaStangGuy]

MSN and Yahoo love keyword rich Title and Meta Description tags. Got to find the right balance and make it make sense to the person that you want to click on your page when they find it via search engines.

[irka]

Originally Posted by JohnScott

Don't worry too much about keyword density. I've seen sites with 90% keyword density ranking fine in Google and elsewhere.

WoW! Cool, but search engines doesn't see it as a penalty? Eheh you shouldn't have told me that

[EricBlackwell]

Perhaps a little clarification is in order...

There is no penalty that is strong enogh to override other (more major) factors (such as linking). HOWEVER, given identical other on and off page characteristics, keyword density and amounDOES in fact still play an admittedly diminished role.

Best bet is solid copywriting with making sure the meta tags above get an extra helping since Y! and MSN are into that still.

Best;

Eric

[cimmeron]

any real added benefit to linking the keywords out to other pages, bolding or in another way emphasizing them?

[EricBlackwell]

IMHO--there is some value left in H1 text and etc in some of the SEs. However, I have never tried to isolate simply the Bold vs not bold or something like that.

With all of the different variables that the algo's offer, I wouldn't think that would be the deal killer...I'd just "throw another link on the fire" and say the hell with it...(grin)

Eric

[DarrenC]

I used to have a very high keyword density and kicked arse in the SERP's. Then decided to include 60% less text (because I was worried people were getting stuck in all of the text) and increased the number of links to the page instead - doing this initially had an impact on the SERPs but it has started to now recover since I am getting more links to the page.

[ablaye]

Do the search engines give more weight to keywords the more they are repeated.

Let's say in the body of my page I repeat the word "freelancer" 10 times, and someone else repeats the word "freelancer" 3 times on their page, will Google and other search engines rank my site higher for that keyword???

[John Scott]

I doubt that repeating the keyword over and over affects the scoring that much. Maybe 0.0001 point. Keyword density is just too easily manipulated.

[kickstart2]

Too much keywords? Honestly, that isn't a problem you have to worry about.

As long as it's spread out decently about your website and it reads fine to your visitors then there is no reason that any SE should penalize you for too much keywords.

In fact, too little might be a problem.

Ultimately, it's just putting it into moderation. Not too little, not too much.

Perhaps one keyword for every one and a half paragaph, or even two, doesn't really matter.

[Manish Pandey]

Well just dont look for the Search Engines... It is the visitors that are going to "buy" the things that you offer and not the search engines.... Search engines can be tricked to get a higher ranking but once a bad impression is made of your website on the visitors who are your potential customers then all your hard work of SEO goes to the vain...

So, just make it natural. Well the places where I use my keywords are...

H1 tag my promary keyword
H2 tag my secondary keyword
H3 tag my tertiary keyword
(well I use 3-4 keywords per page you can use more but that may dilute the page. Thats what I feel.)

Then 3-4 times in the HTML body
1 time bold and 1 time italicizing the keyword and 1 time underlining it...

Keyword at the start (i.e your H1 tag) and I use one more place to put my keyword i.e at the end of the body. Search engines tend to read your page from top-left to the bottom-right and when they see the kaywords there they feel that this is a page that has a very good information about that keyword.

I hope this helps

Take care

Manish

[vangogh]

I agree with Manish. Write your pages for your visitors first. Those few extra keywords probably won't do all the much to improve your rank, but they can do a lot to turn off potential customers.

Write naturally and keep your page focused on the page's subject. If you do that you'll find you almost always end up using your keywords the right amount of times.

[Dan Williamson]

Most people usually say that the best keyword density is 3% to 5% but I have seen more with awesome ranks, but I would keep it under 10%.