[bestformaldress23]

I'm aiming this post at Vedran, thanks to an email I sent him about keywords. We hear different things about using keywords to target our blog posts. Do you use one keyword three times? Several keywords one time? How many is enough, and how many is too much? Vedran, feel free to take the floor on this one.

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Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Keywords?
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[bobibnoxx]

We hear different things about using keywords to target our blog posts. Do you use one keyword three times? Several keywords one time? How many is enough, and how many is too much? SEO's look at a silly metric called keyword density. As the metric suggests, it's the percentage that a keyword appears on the page. The general rule of thumb is less than 5%. Exceed 5% and that's too much. Mention it at the end of a blog post as an afterthought is probably too little.

The reason why the metric even exists is because of a black hat technique called keyword stuffing (click for more details). Repetitive words, or just downright having words that have nothing to do with your content are considered keyword stuffing. Gone are the days where search engines used to weigh meta tags and keyword count for search results.

A lot of my tested "best practices" have basically become "theories" since Google makes up to 500 many algorithmic changes a year.

But in general:
Your most important keyword phrase in the title.
Your secondary keyword phrases/variants(i.e. different tenses) in the starting paragraph or <h2> titles.
Write for readability - reading the same keyword phrase over and over is not just a writing practice but also a bad SEO one.
Use synonyms - this strengthens the keyword you're targetting.

Oh, here's a link to some of the worst keyword stuffing you can do courtesy of Matt Cutts.

[lXwVlTgO]

I recommend using as many keywords as possible in the contents of your text. But make sure your content reads well and is always always make good use of English. If you do this will prevent that keyword density is too high and do not look good.

[exchpaypaleg]

So, Panstreamer, how many keywords should we use in a given post?

[Xxedxevh]

Roughly 2~5% of the total#of words you have on said page for one particular keyword is the generally accepted practice.

If my primary keyword was "business trends," it'd also be a great idea to focus on other secondary keywords like "local business trends," "technology business trends," "marketing business trends," etc. Go crazy on this, because you'll benefit from it. The idea is to spread as wide of a net as possible when you're thinking about the intent of the random surfer on the web - while still staying relevant on your blog post, and not be spammy and annoying to read.

Again, you wouldn't want business or trends to take up over 2~5% of the total page content, because that seems to be the rough threshold for Google to say that you're keyword stuffing. So if it were a 500 word post, don't say the word "business" or "trends" over 10~25 times. Well, where do you fall? 10 or 25? That depends on how much Google trusts you and your site. That's another topic on its own.

[JulieSmithdccd]

If you are asking about keyword density, I do not exceed to 3.5%.

[g4YthYXx]

Yes it is a very good question and keywords are very essential and important for the site. I agree that there must be a good content and English must be written clear and meaningful. Several keywords can be used in one site but better is to use one in one site.


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