Finding the keyword density that helps your page appear in Google’s search results, but doesn’t cross the line, is not a simple task. However, there are a few proven practices with which you can succeed!
What is keyword stuffing?
In the days when search engines were not as intelligent as they are today, content creators often used the tactic of stuffing web pages with keywords to rank higher in search results. For example, like this:
„Photo gifts creation is something we offer. If you want to give something truly personal, choose from our photo gifts. Every single photo gift is made with the utmost care. A photo gift can be an eternal memory for the recipient.”
Notice how annoying such text is? Fortunately, nowadays many people know that this is not a good method, firstly because it causes visitors to leave immediately, and secondly because Google actually penalizes keyword stuffing violations.
But there are other sneaky ways to display keywords more often on your site. For example, we could write a block in a color identical to the background, which consists only of keywords. Or we could stuff meta descriptions. The thing is, even though users don’t see these, Google does, so it’s not worth trying with these either.
Why and how does it harm your website if you use keywords unjustifiably often?
After the photo gift example, it must be obvious to you why: because a website written with such excessive keyword usage gives an unworthy picture of your business and visitors will flee immediately when they read into it.
Valuable content must be informative and captivating for the user. This can only be achieved if we write the content with the target audience’s interests in mind, not for the search engine. If a user encounters meaningless text unnecessarily stuffed with keywords, they will quickly abandon it, resulting in a high bounce rate and the page will rank lower in search results.
Overall, in today’s world of intelligent search engines, you can’t trick these methods because it will backfire. Instead, you should focus on producing valuable content and using keywords wisely.
What is the ideal keyword density on a page?
Although there are no set-in-stone numbers for this, best practice shows that the occurrence of keywords on the page in relation to all words used should not exceed 2%.
So let’s look at the photo gift example: The entire paragraph consists of 35 words and the photo gift phrase appears 4 times in it. With a little percentage calculation, we can immediately see that the text has far exceeded the 2% keyword density threshold considered ideal: 4/35=0.11, so the keyword density is more than 11%.
How to use keywords to achieve good results and make Google happy?
Choose one primary keyword
It is important that this word itself expresses the essence of the entire page. Research with GoogleAds Keyword Planner how much interest there is and how much competition there is. The best is when there is high interest but low competition. You can also check Google Trends to see, for example, how the popularity of your chosen word or phrase has evolved over the past 5 years, from which you can gain valuable information.
Add secondary keywords to the primary keyword
Use Google’s related search terms, synonym dictionary, and again the GoogleAds Keyword Planner. With their help, you can get valuable secondary keywords with which you can make your page content more colorful and enjoyable while creating relevant text that matches your primary keywords.
Aim for content consisting of at least 300 words
When Google ranks search results for a given search term, it monitors which page content can provide comprehensive and in-depth information to the user. For this, a few lines will not be enough, a minimum of 300-word text should be on a page.
Use keywords in the right places
Of course, it is important that SEO-important terms appear here and there in the “body” section, but it is even more important that
• meta title
• meta description
• H1, H2, H3 headings
• image alt text
the primary keyword appears and if possible the related keywords as well, because the search engines will primarily examine these when ranking.
This is how we work with copywriting and SEO optimization. If you would entrust the text of your website to experts, contact us!
