With all the advancements search engines have made, a lot of folks in the SEO world are circling back to a fundamental question: If I'm targeting a particular keyword, where and how often should I use that in the front and back ends of my page? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand puts his recommendations into the context of today's SERPs.
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!
Video transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about keyword use, keyword repetition and overuse.
I know this might seem like a basic topic, but actually it's advanced a little bit in the last few years, and I still get a surprising amount of email and see a surprising number of questions around things like, "How many times should I use my keyword that I'm targeting to rank for in my URL string or my H1 tag or my title? Or how many different pages should I have that target this keyword?" So let's try and clear a little bit of this up.
Let's say I've done a search here, "Are skeleton keys real?" I see results ranking. This is actually kind of a nice result, because what you see are not a lot of pages that say, "Are skeleton keys real?" I just did this search, and the top 20 results, there's actually not even one where the title of the piece or the headline of the document is, "Are skeleton keys real?"
You see lots of documents ranking in Google that don't perfectly match this keyword set. I think that's a good example of how far Google has come in trying to understand the intent behind queries, how far they've come in terms of connecting topics and keywords, how far they've come on topic modeling algorithms.
Keyword repetition considerations
So really there are three primary considerations that we do still need to worry about as SEOs.
1) Search result snippet
The first one is the search result snippet itself. I've taken Etsy's snippet here, which is not fantastic. Then when you get to the page, that product is actually gone, and Etsy is suggesting some other ones, which aren't skeleton keys. Kind of frustrating because they do have skeleton keys if you search on the site. In any case, I'm sure Stephanie and the SEO team over at Etsy will take care of that ASAP.
The primary considerations in your search result snippet are: Is the result informative and useful? I want to be able to look at this and think to myself, "Aha! That tells me something that I didn't already know, or it starts to tell me something about whether or not skeleton keys are real or not and where they come from and history and what they are." Is it useful? Can I apply that information? Is that going to help me accomplish whatever I'm trying to accomplish? In this case, a very information-based query, so the only accomplishment is the knowledge itself.
Is it going to draw the eye and the click? This is a great reason why rich snippets are so valuable and why anything you can do to bulk up or add to your snippet, get more vertical space, make your listing stand out can be helpful.
Then is it perceived as relevant and trustworthy by searchers? So a lot of times, that's going to be a brand consideration set. They're going to be looking at the domain name. They might be looking in the title for a brand there, if it is there, if it's not there, those kinds of things.
2) Keyword analysis algorithms
This is kind of the classic thing where I think a lot of early SEOs get lost and maybe even some folks who have been around for a long time remember back in the day when Google and Yahoo and old MSN search, before Bing, would actually look at the count and the repetition numbers, probably never actually used density, but they probably did use simplistic algorithms like TFIDF, term frequency times inverse document frequency, looking for those less frequently used terms across the Web and seeing if you have a higher concentration of those in your document than other people do.
Keyword Matching
Well, now there are probably still some elements of keyword matching. Google is likely to give you a little bit of a boost if you say, "Are skeleton keys real?" and everybody else says, "Real vintage antique skeleton keys," or something like that.
I'm not suggesting against using this actual keyword phrase precisely. If you know that's what your article is about, that's the piece of content that you have and those are the searchers you want to target, yeah, go ahead. Make the title of the piece, "Are Skeleton Keys Real? We Dig Into History to Find Out." That's a compelling title. I would click on that if that were my search query. So there are some keyword matching elements.
Topic Modeling
There's probably some topic modeling, well, almost certainly some topic modeling stuff where they're looking at, "What are other terms and phrases that are frequently used when we see skeleton keys used?" If we do see those terms and phrases on other people's pages, but we don't see them on yours, we might not consider your document to be relevant to the keyword. Maybe you're talking about skeleton keys as a new programming language. Maybe you're talking about the skeleton key mobile app. I don't know if that's a real thing, but it could be. Maybe Skeleton Keys is the name of your dog.
They don't know. So they look at these topic modeling sorts of algorithms to try and figure out, "Oh, okay, look, they're talking about locks. They're talking about antiques. They're talking about history. I think we can be relatively assured that, yes, this document is on the topic of skeleton keys." If you don't use those words and phrases, the topic modeling algorithm is going to miss you.
Intent analysis
Google is looking very hard for user intent. What do people want from this query? They have a huge store of knowledge around past queries that people have performed, trillions and trillions of queries over the decade and a half that Google has been around that they can look at and say, "Aha, when was the intent of a keyword informational, transactional, navigational, and can we try and figure out what the intent of this particular keyword search is and then serve up results that hit that intent right on the nose?"
Look, sometimes when you get analyzed for this, if you are not serving the same intent, so if you're selling skeleton keys, it could be that you actually won't rank as well for "Are skeleton keys real?" as someone who's providing purely an informational document. If someone searches for antique skeleton keys, your document about "Are Antique Skeleton Keys Real?" might not rank as well as someone who actually sells them, because Google is trying to serve that intent, and they do a pretty good job with that.
QDD/QDF
Then there might be some other algorithm elements in there like QDD, query deserves diversity. So maybe Google sees different intents for a search, and so they try and provide different results and you might rank because of that, or you might not rank because of that, or things like QDF where they say, "We need a fresh result here." People are looking for recent documents around skeleton keys because there was a big item in the news about a break-in using skeleton keys. So we know we should put the news box in there and maybe we should have a document that's much fresher, those kinds of things.
3) Searcher opinions and Engagement
This matters a ton because if searchers don't engage with your piece, if they stand around and they go, "I don't think I should click on that." It doesn't even take as long as I just took to say those words. You just make that split-second judgment as you're scanning down a page of search results about whether something is relevant to your needs or not.
Searchers are constantly asking themselves when they look at a set of results, "Should I click back? Should I reengage? Should I share and amplify the content once I reach it? Should I remember this brand or this page or bookmark it?" All of those kinds of things go into the search engine's consideration set as well. They make their way in there through user and usage data. We know that Google can monitor and measure, certainly when you click back to the search results. We know that through Chrome and through Android and all these other things, Toolbar, that they can look at activity that's happening on a website or through a search journey.
We know they can see sharing and amplification data absolutely if it's links. They can probably look at other kinds of amplification too. They definitely can look at people who remember a brand and search for a brand. So if someone searches for "Etsy skeleton keys," that might be a strong signal to Google that they should rank Etsy's page when people search for just skeleton keys. All of those kinds of things are making it in here.
So we have to ask ourselves, "Does this match the need that I have? Are we creating pages that searchers feel matches their need?" They're asking, "Do I recognize or trust this brand?" Or at least, "If I don't know this brand at all, when I look at the URL and the domain name" -- Bing did a big study on this a couple of years ago -- they ask themselves, "Does that sound like a sketchy domain name?" For example, I did see antique-skeleton-keys.com ranking for this query. They're still on page one. It's not actually that terrible a page, although it has some kind of spammy AdSense all mixed in there. But it has some information.
That kind of stuff, when searchers see that, they are less likely to click it because they've had bad experiences with multiple-hyphenated, keyword matchy domains. Antique-skeleton-keys.com, no offense, but you all aren't doing that world an entirely big favor right now.
Then they're going to ask, "Does the snippet stand out and grab my attention?" If it does, more likely to get a higher click-through rate, more likely to get that engagement.
So... how many times should I repeat my keywords?
So these three big considerations lead us to some quick rules of thumb. I'm going to say that for 95% of pages out there -- not every single one, there are always going to be a few exceptions --but for 95% of the pages out there, you should do at least these things. I'll put nice little boxes here to help out.
Yes, I should have my keyword that I'm targeting, if I know that I'm going after this keyword, this search intent, that's what the page is about, that's the primary keyword target, I should target it at least once in the title element of the page.
Likewise, you should do the same thing in the headline. This is not because the H1 tag is all that important. It doesn't even matter all that much whether it's H1 or H2 or H3, or if your CSS is a little messy, that's okay. As long as the big letters at the top of the page that make up the headline, so that when a searcher lands after clicking, "Are skeleton keys real?" and seeing your, "Are Skeleton Keys Real?" article, they again see right at the top of the page, "Are Skeleton Keys Real?"
So they know they clicked on the right result and they have that consistency. People really like that. That's very important from a psychological perspective, and you need that so that people don't click back and choose a different result because they're like, "Wait a minute, this article is not the one that I thought I clicked on. This is something else."
I'm going to say two to three times in content. That is a very rough rule. Generally speaking, if you don't have the keyword at least a couple of times in the content of the page, unless you have an extremely visual page or an interactive page with almost no content, which maybe that would fall in the 5%, you should definitely be hitting that.
Then one time in the meta description. Meta description is important because of the snippet aspect of it. Not that critical from like, "Oh, that will boost my ranking." No, but it might boost your click-through rate. It might make you appear more relevant to the searcher as they're searching through, and it will help target that.
Again, sometimes in that 5% there, there might be times when a snippet is actually better without the keyword. Again, especially if it's a long keyword phrase and you only have a little bit of room to explain things, okay.
So 95% of pages should do at least this.
Secondary considerations
Then many pages should also consider doing a little bit of image optimization with things like a keyword in the image alt attribute, assuming you have an image on the page. For a keyword like this, you would definitely want to have some pictures of what skeleton keys have looked like, do look like today, that kind of thing.
The image file name itself too, which is important for image SEO. Images still get a good amount of search traffic. Even if you don't get a ton of click-through rate, you might get people using your image and then citing it, and that could lead to link behavior. So we're talking about a long tail here, but a valuable long tail.
Once in the URL, generally this is important, but not critical, certainly not critical. There could be plenty of reasons why you have a perfectly reasonable URL that does not include the keywords many, many times. A homepage is a great example. Homepage, you don't need to change your default homepage to include your keyword string so that when you request whatever, Etsy.com, it redirects to vintage antique skeleton keys. No, don't do that.
One or more times in the subheaders of the page. If you have multiple blocks of subheaders that are describing different attributes of a particular piece of content, well, go ahead, use your keywords in there as they might apply.
Don't go overboard. Another big rule of thumb. You can see my friend here. He's being weighed down by his keywords. His ship has almost turned over. Search engines are going to use stemming. So stemming is basically saying, "I'm going to look at skeleton and I'm going to cut that down to 'skelet' so that if the word 'skeletal' or the words 'skeletons' or 'skeletals' or 'Skeletor' . . ." well, maybe Skeletor means a little something different. You guys remember He-Man, right? I know some of my viewers do.
But that stemming is going to mean that lots and lots of repetitions of minor variance of a keyword are totally unnecessary. In fact, they can annoy searchers and people who are consuming that content, and they might even trigger the engine systems that say, "This is keyword stuffing. This is bad. Don't do it." Keyword stuffing, by the way, super easy to pattern match for engines. It's going to make searchers click the Back button. So use a lot of caution if you're thinking about that.
What about on-page keyword use?
Remember that on-page keyword use is only a small piece of the algorithm. We're talking about a relatively small piece. You could get all of this absolutely perfect, or you could get only, say, 80%, just this stuff right, and the difference is pretty minute in terms of your ranking ability. So I would urge you not to spend too much time trying to go from, "Well, I hit these basic things that Rand talked about, but now I'm going to try and take my keyword targeting and on-page optimization to the absolute max." You can get a very, very tiny extra amount of value.
Do consider searchers' intent and target topics and questions that they have. Engines are smart about this too. So engines have these topic analysis and intent analysis models. So a page that talks about skeleton keys, that fails to mention words like locks or wards or master keys, the engines might go, "That doesn't seem particularly relevant or not as relevant as the pages that do. So even though it has more links pointing at it, we're going to rank it lower."
Likewise, plenty of searchers are searching for those topics as well. So if you don't answer those queries and someone else does, well, they might click on you, but then they'll click back. Or they might click on you, but they won't share you or amplify you or link to you or bookmark you or remember your brand. You need all those signals in the modern on-page world.
All right, everyone. Look forward to some great keyword targeting, some good questions in the Q&A and the comments below. I'll see you next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
"By the power of GraySkull", that was a great WBF Rand and one I am sure that He-Man and his trusty Battle Cat would surely have enjoyed! :)
There were so many great tips in the vid, that will not only benefit newer seo'ers, but also some of us whom have been around a tad longer. My favourite part was around the topic modelling and answering user questions that stem from your targetted keywords.
Cheers
Tim
Thanks Tim! If you liked that bit, be sure to check out the WB Friday I did on Topic Modeling a while back (if you haven't already, of course).
Excellent WBF, Rand! I really like it when the SEO fundamentals are revisited from a whole new perspective. IMO, while Google and other search engines have revamped their algo to match users intent, thereby serving up results that "just works", it's a fact that their renewed algo has actually affected only a fraction of the results. Why do you say that, you ask? As a user myself, I still come across hundreds of search results that outrank better pages and, dare I say, beat the smart search engines at their own game. That said, there's still a huge room for webmasters to rank well following the most ethical optimization approach possible. I just hope to see better/deserving pages outranking the shady pages for most of my search queries someday soon.
It's little bit funny because some software tools count keyword density as "important factor for ranking".
they do what people want to hear. what seems easy and clear to solve.
How many tools say, that the number of links are important? Or that W3C matters? A lot of tools say Keyword Density is the faktor, some of them use WDFxIDF like onpage org - what you can test 4 free here: https://en.onpage.org/product/free/ (i would say one of the best onpage tools atm)
I agree, Peter. Yoast, for instance, is all about keyword density. Rather than making sure the pages of your site reach a specific keyword total quota, I think we're better off using Yoast and other similar tools as an SEO checklist to ensure that we're including the keywords we're trying to rank for and other related keywords people search for in our content, our h1's, our title title tags and in our meta descriptions.
Yeah - I think long term, that's going to fade. Moz itself uses a pretty simplistic count of keyword uses and we haven't gotten good at topic modeling/more sophisticated keyword analyses in our on-page tool (though I know Jon & the Moz Analytics team are working on it). There's still value to making sure your title includes the keywords, and that a keyword phrase is on the page 1-2X (like I noted in the video), but tools like Moz and others need to be able to go further and pick up modified uses of terms/phrases just like the engines can.
Great stufd... love it
Thanks for posting this. I still get questions about "optimal keyword density" percentages and people get confused when I tell them that it is a waste of time because they then think I mean "keywords are not important" and that is not true either.
"Everything in moderation, nothing to excess" is attributed to Socrates and I think that could be applied here, but there are times, sometimes where you do need to lay it on a little thicker and I then think of a quote by Ben Franklin, "Do everything in moderation, including moderation."
Great job Rand of striking the right balance with this post! I think Ben would have approved.
Just point them to this: https://www.theopenalgorithm.com/myths/killing-off-... It's got everything:
1) KW Density has a slightly negative correlation w/ higher rankings
2) KW Density hasn't been patented or written about as a useful methodology in any research paper and was dismissed by library science information retrieval specialists in the 1960s
3) Search engine reps have said point blank that it isn't used
Somehow, like a ghost, it manages to live on.... Ugh.
Your DP is nice!
Skeletor was the bomb. Excellent information on whiteboard Friday again, as always.
User-side comment: I really agree with your focus on consistency by showing the user the same topic at the top of the article that was in the snippet. Nothing is more frustrating than searching for a topic and clicking on results that are inconsistent with the snippet. I could rant so hard about the bait and switch tactic, or even bait and totally rephrase in such a way that I am left confused and not able to address my query.
Totally agree - that's the biggest reason I recommend keeping the headline and title the same - it's not because the engines care all that much directly, but searchers really do, and seeing a different title in the SERPs vs. on the page can result in a higher bounce rate (which almost certainly will hurt your rankings over time).
Hello Rand,
Hardest thing is to keep the perfect ratio. Keyword overuse is easy thing. I have seen many web pages, where Site has overused of keywords in hidden text or kept them with display:none tag.Surprisingly, for sometimes, they rank well too with such spam techniques. While selecting and using keywords, soon we need to think about voice search keywords volume too, correct pronunciation will play major role in that.
I think one of the good strategies is to provide answers to questions, and google works very intelligent here: if you enter a question query google tries to find answer pages. My little blog about "Four reason why performance tuning is worth the effort" (in German: warum sich performance tuning lohnt) e.g. still ranks among top3 google.de for the question query: "Lohnt sich Performance Tuning?" ALTHOUGH I never used that question in my blog texts anywhere! https://www.google.de/?gws_rd=ssl#q=lohnt+sich+performance+optimierung%3F
Totally! Google isn't just paying attention to matching of keywords - they want content that matches intent.
Yes, agreed, its working on User's intent.
Hi Rand,
This is an interesting topic that you present in this article.
I like collect more information about QDD/QDF that How Search engine justify QDD of the the particular site?
A little more on that topic here: https://moz.com/blog/does-query-deserves-diversity... and https://angular.marketing/2015/06/29/googles-amazin... (more recently)
First, I do remember Heman and Skeletor ;)
I really like to see Google SERPs with no Exact Match Keywords in title and description. I am more likely to klick on the other pages, because the idea "they must have done something really good". Just like URLs - I am more satisfied with the results, when I ignore the EMDs in the SERPs. That is not allways the truth, there must be some really good EMDs out there - but the most EMDs are not that great - that leads me to ignore them all.
For everyone new in SEO - it is pretty easy to overoptimize. Like you said its a high risk for a tiny benefit.
It's impressive how often people think it's good to repeat a target search query as often as possible. I simply ask these people this Question: Why should Google show me the site wich repeats my query most, when I am searching for the best answer? TGIF
Interesting theory... That searchers might, over time, bias their clicks away from exact matches and go with the broader, more "fulfill my intent but don't repeat my exact keywords" type pages. We'll have to watch the CTR research carefully for that.
Well, thats what I do - as an SEO I know what I do, with MOZbar running in overlay I get a pretty good Idea why the sites rank here. But my wife starts to stop clicking EMDs and Question-Repeats and she is far away from an search nerd =)
I saw that and asked: Why you don't click that #1 result? And she said: This site repeats my question and I am searching an answer.
Sounds like you are rubbing off on her.
why not, she's a smart girl =)
No I do that since I use the words "OK Google". I start to speak to my Searchengine and my SE starts to become more human fo me. No I search for the more-human answers.
Well done Rand. Awesome material for my clients that want to over optimize their site and blog post. I love it!
What I always have been thinking is that Google uses wikipedia as a benchmark. I always thought that Wikipedia is best practice in action.
The Wikipedia articles are always spot on:
Google Downloaded the Wikipedia database and analysed it.
They just looked for things like:
They found probably a lot of patterns and relationships in the big data.
If you site or page is a outlier you're suspicious.
Slightly off topic @Rand Fishkin: when I search in google for "whiteboard friday" I get this page all the time https://moz.com/ugc/category/whiteboard-friday so ugc while I'm really interested in https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday is it another Moz experiment for duplicate content?? also on Rands' wbf page have all recent topics while ugc one starts with posts from January 22nd, 2009 and all posts are very old. I wonder why google likes ugc one more. I assume links number factor to ugc category?? All the best for moz fans! :)
Yup - we saw that too and are working on it. Google seems to have dropped a bunch of our Moz Blog category pages. Not to worry - Cyrus is all over it and will have, I'm sure, an interesting post-mortem when it's fixed.
Very interesting and valuable information. I'm working myself into improve my site ranking, any thoughts would be appreciated www.actmovers.com.au thanks guys
Initial thoughts: place business logo in top left of header and phone number in top right. Very confronting website display currently (especially the ginormous content logo). Keep at it!
I will change that, thanks for the observations.
A bit off topic... but killer hair! Not sure what it is called, wrap-tail? Is quite interesting Mr. Fishkin!
Not related to this Whiteboard Friday, but I was wondering why it is impossible to find the latest Whiteboard Friday on the category page "https://moz.com/ugc/category/whiteboard-friday". It shows me Whiteboard Fridays from 2008. It happened to me several time that I remembered that I did not watch the latest Whiteboard Friday (sorry happens) and then I do not have the Email or Facebook link any more. So I search on Google for "Whiteboard Friday", and find your category page, but there I can not find the latest once. Is there a logic behind this?
Same issue as I've described above. You are entering UGC "whiteboard friday" tag. In my opinion MOZ should redirect it to normal "Whiteboard Friday" https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday (you will find all whiteboard friday posts there)
Thank you for this article. Many times we obsess about number of keywords, but there are many things more important to get better ranking position
Hi Rand,
as a new SEO/Blogger, I really got a lot out of this presentation.
Thanks
Keith
ps when are you going back to get your haircut finished?
Excellent WBF, Rand! I really like,
thank you!!!!!
That's why i always wait for WBF because it breaks the Myths and misconceptions of SEO theories. I read many blogs and Tools saying Keywords density an important factor to get rank. I wish all such people to read this article who follow those Myths..
Great post Rand..
Hello Rand,
I'm late to the on going discussion but this was pretty impressive to watch. You Started from a very basic notion but went deep into topics like topic modeling and QDF/QDD. Intent is an all time target and it should be and there shpuldn't be any corollary to this theorem when it comes to search engine optimization. Doing every on-site work great but not serving your niche queries and not focusing on what searchers might be looking for your target service or product is something that would make you loose the game. At times, pages might get overboard over the topics but that shouldn't affect much I guess? Is there any high correlation for this? Also, not sure why sub-domain point is important when it comes to keyword repetition? There are lot of other good things to focus on to even if one doesn't have sub-domain attribute as you mentioned. What do you think? Thanks!
I agree Susanta. I'm hoping too. But if I don't see better results soon I will be forced to look for new employment. My online business worked fine for 11 years. I'm really starting to wish I never became so reliant on Google for business. It is now a very unreliable way to generate income and is still way too risky if you do. Trust me, I've experienced the worst thing that has ever happened to my business. It was my life. All that hard work wasted and now my young family who rely on me are left with no income all because of a stupid algorithm. Very depressing! Especially when you are good at what you do and now no one will know about it if they can't find you.
I'm considering giving up on the whole internet, do something that doesn't even need a website. Maybe I'll be back one day but only if things improve. It's just way too risky the way it is now. Not worth the stress and money to keep up with modern SEO. Honest businesses are being punished for dodgy businesses past mistakes. Thanks Google!
How much keywords density we can take in our 400 words article? Because Maybe there is 1 density is enough for 400 words, how to know it will be harmful or usable?
Don't focus on that, write for the user and provide valuable content. If the content is valuable and relevant to your website, semantic search will prove to be more valuable than how many times you use your keyword. These are great guidelines, but they are not black and white and should not be followed that way.
Keyword density, placement and snippets are all good stuff but if you have not identified the intent of the searcher for the keyword search term that is effectively a question all else will fail over time. Give the searcher what they want, good unnique and relavant information with NO surprises.
I rarely disagree with Rand and in this case, it's only minor.
First off, it took so long to get to the answer, I was very concerned that the actual question posed wasn't going to be addressed! Although I understand the need for some basics for those that have no clue, my opinion is that the main body of the video had very little to do with the actual answer and went a little off topic. We're all allowed to have opinions, though, right?
The only difference I have in what Rand suggests is that I tell people that the keyword should appear in the text at least once (not 2-3 times). Once it is there at least one time (especially if it is already in the title tag and in an H-tag of some sort), I have found that having LSI words - in particular, some of those that Google suggests in its Related Searches - is more important than any repetition of the targeted keyword phrase. I have had plenty pages rank well without a single backlink for fairly competitive terms, using the same approach.
Other than that, we're in complete agreement.
As per know search engines view the quality of a web site based in part on the keyword density of the site. Keywords are supposed to indicate what a web page is all about. So, this is the great article and i love that video you sharing.
Excellent WBF as always.. I would like to know, have you come across any page that's ranking well without a content? Yes, the URL, Title, Heading tags does contain the keywords.. Or simply the design of page doesn't afford to have content and it's still ranking because of domain power.
Another great video, thank you, it's actually quite appropriate for what we are doing right now.....also love the "Skeletor" reference! ;O)
I've been running keyword density analyses for years against the top four results for various keywords for clients, and although a lot of them seemed to run around 1.5% - 2% three years ago, for the last two years just below 1% seems about the average - about .8%.
So, using the target keyword once for every hundred words seems a reasonable rule of thumb, all other things being equal (like, if you don't have the time to bother with a keyword density analysis).
Also it seems like document lengths of 1000-1200 are coming up a lot more often in the top SERPs, for what it's worth.
The bigger challenge is simply - above your competitors. So if they don't mention those keywords much, mentioning it a little more often would help you be found more easily and greater lengths in general are making the bigger difference for search results.
I think your guide is generally good, but with semantic search becoming more relevant, it's more about the intention of the terms and the relatability of them to the user. Kittens in top hats = kittens wearing beanies? Maybe it does.
Ted - I'd challenge you on this metric. The engines haven't used keyword density as a measurement system since the late 1990's. Looking at the density percent is probably not giving you anything of value and taking up time you could spend on more useful metrics for your keyword targeting and content optimization. I know it's a tempting metric simply because it's easy to calculate and somehow got associated with the SEO world back in the early days (even though search engine reps have been saying for 15 years that it's useless).
Interesting stuff, I did wonder where we were at with regards keywords, most of the time I advise people to just focus on what they want to say to their users and then we review to see if it makes sense/fits what people expect to find. Of course this has its own issues and does sometimes result in a page under performing
Great example of this is that we had a number of very detailed "case studies" that are on our site, however testing has revealed that while our users want the information, they don't know what a case study is! Doesn't matter how good the content is if the user can't find it
I'm honestly sick of thinking about it. My head hurts. I think Google just need to start using humans more to rank pages. Then I'm positive my site pages will all rank number one again. Any human would scan through the top 20 and see my site is the best by far compared to my competition but because it's all up to the damn robot it's not the case. I'm barley in the top 50 now. My business is ruined after 11 years. Why? Because I cleaned up my site to avoid keyword stuffing and to make it more mobile friendly. I wish I'd just left it as it was. Messy, hard to navigate and way too much text stuffed with keywords. Obviously that's what Google preferred. Lesson learned. Don't mess with your site if it is ranking well. Don't change a thing!
you have spent a lot of time being angry with google I see. Maybe you are not doing something right. Or maybe one of the google updates hit you.
Are you tracking your sites performance via webmaster tools? Do you use any other SEO web app out there to audit your site to know if you are doing something wrong?
There are a lot of tools out there that I am sure would go a long way in assisting you get higher ranking.
Moz is one of them ;)
I've had my website since 2004 so yes I am aware of the tools. Looking at analytics is depressing for me now. I know why it's happened. A URL change for all my main pages and no ability to put redirects in place. I was advised by Godaddy to just wait a few weeks and the new site will start to rank. It was for a little. But now its getting worse. Keywords that used to get me the top spot now I'm lucky to find myself on page 10. I do enjoy WBF and will probably continue to watch but for the average self employed worker I wouldn't recommend relying on your website for income. It can all go wrong through no fault of your own and all your work is lost forever. We shouldn't have to spend so much time on all this technical stuff just to survive. We have businesses to run. SEO is becoming a full time job that little guys like me can not afford. Maybe that's what Google wants. If you're not a big 'brand' then good luck. Times are changing.
Instead of being mad at Google, you should probably be mad at the gang of people that first started performing all of the black hat techniques that make the measures Google has in place in it's algorithm necessary in the first place. It's not an issue of big brand versus little brand; it's always an issue of content (and relevancy and linking) being KING.
"I wouldn't recommend relying on your website for income." I prefer something like this, "I wouldn't recommend relying on search for income.". With a rise in channels like social media and other forum and community sites, there is opportunity to get business outside search also.
I like your style and this article too ;)
Again a good WBF class, its basic but still powerful for optimizing pages.
Thanks for covering this topic Rand. I have been waiting for a more in depth analysis about on page keyword optimization for a while now.You did a great job.
Excellent post again!The video you have shared is really insightful. Also the point you have mentioned about keyword in content is quite useful.
Hi Rand,
Will this work on News sites as well? Also in page title and meta description does staying within character matter? I ask since many news article titles tend to be longer than the 60 character limit.
Thanks
The character limit is advisory not necessary. A longer title can also rank well. Personally, I don't see news sites focus on the character limit that much.
Well search intent is also find relevancy on keywords, its really necessary to put at least 1 key-phrase on your title, meta description and <h1> tag. where you talking about keyword sense like "are skeleton key real" then it might open the same relevant searches. if i am searching for "Skeleton Organization" then its definitely open some sort of medical organization or related to search term.
Hi Rand, all valid points and i was checking my own process through this, if I am missing out on something while publishing content. So far, it's all good. I also understand the frustration when Google don't reward your best practices. But the real reason I am writing this comment is to let you know that I loved your expression at 14:38, lasted for 2 seconds :) It shows how you react to see the stuff that is not at all good for websites, rankings and ultimately for users.
A few years ago there was much buzz about how latent semantic indexing had replaced keyword repetition - is there any update on this at all?
Hi Rand,
I am really loving your whiteboard Fridays! I create websites basically as a hobby and have had a bit of interest in SEO for a while now but have never really practiced it. I am currently starting a business and will be creating a new website so I have been researching SEO and found your videos and articles.
In this video you made a point of saying that keyword repetition and placement is only a small piece of the puzzle for your websites SEO. I also just watched your "Why Effective, Modern SEO Requires Technical, Creative, and Strategic Skills" video and was a little taken back by some of the technical tools and methods you mentioned.
Just wondering if you could give me a quick answer or link me to somewhere I can find the answer to this - If keyword placement and repetition only makes up a small fraction of the SEO value of your page, what other factors influence it, or which factors influence it the most and should be focused on most for a new website? I obviously know that content is key, having a well-structured website helps and that link building through guest blogging and valued outreach is important, but what are the top 5 or 10 most important things to plan or consider?
Thanks heaps!
Our site has a comment/review system, so each page can feature a brand name over 100 times. We can't avoid this unless we hide the reviews and comments. Obviously we would like to rank for the brand we are featuring but have a concern over the amount times our customers use the same phrases in their comments.
Are there any opinions on this?
Bump?
Hi Rand, thanks for the informative article. When I analyzed my web page in Moz tools, it is warning that the keyword "dance classes" is used excessively in the page (30 times). But, it is need because we are showing a listing page whose skill set is "dance classes".
Is this okay or should I change something?
I have learned that repeating the keyword meaninglessly all over the site is somewhat detrimental, I had the big mistake of doing it before and then pay the consequences, I get to be in position 3 and then go down to page 5 of google
Thanks for this posting, i will to learn about this.
Nice article Rand. We have to admit that everyone has their own perceptive for Search Engine Optimization. Snippets are important but do they have role in keyword ranking? We will easily get hundreds of different opinion on this. Well i enjoyed reading this article....
Thanks Rand for this post, As you mention earlier int this post that its a basic topic for all and we read about this topic many time. But you describe it here very well, I really don't know about Keyword Matching, Topic Modeling, Intent analysis, QDD/QDF so thanks for this. Now it really helpful to reduce keyword repetition in website to avoid repetition.
the percent age of repetition of targeted keywords was always confusing my mind. Thanks for the post rand. I will try as you have explained instead of using traditional old %5 percent techniques :)
Rand Hello!
If you want to appear in the results of Google it is obvious that we must use keywords with which we want to find our blog or business, but not spend.
If we put the keyword too many times, Google will detect it.
We must include the word in the title and throughout the text a few times but naturally, without being noticed.
Nice article!
Thanks I really needed a review of this as of 2015.
Really in-depth keyword repetition analisys - thanks for sharing valued info.
great video, thank you
Use keywords in your page smartly its a ranking factor
Determining what a user wants is so important to a good page SEO strategy! I think the thing we get lost in with content is finding that sweet spot with keywords in content to back up your header tags. Excellent WBF!
Rand,
I like the way you explained this topic. Keywords optimization is not about to use keywords in your content aggressively it's all about to use keywords phrases smartly and with natural way. We need to write user friendly content that people love to read, it will automatically lead towards better ranking.
One question that I would like to ask "Is it necessary to have page title and H1 same on a web page?"
Thanks
It's not necessary, but I would generally recommend making the title and headline match (doesn't have to be the H1 - if you're using H2 or H3 or just bold+larger text, that's fine) so users can easily see that it's on the same topic.
That make sense...! Thanks rand to clear this point.
Etsy sure did take care of that rather quick.
FUFISM??? I googled it and got nothing. jhesu I think your website looks great, delivers the message and is easy to navigate. What more could you want? Oh that's right. It's Google we have to keep happy these days. Good luck!
How to know if I am going overboard?
Use good judgement! Be empathetic and think like a searcher and like your audience. If you're struggling, ask a few folks to look at the page and be honest with you.
Great point Rand As long as the big letters at the top of the page that make up the headline,
If you did a good job doing your SEO do not drop the ball when it comes to your visitors. You need to match your web page with the searchers intent and you need to do it quickly!!!
Do this right and you will increase your conversions. I promise!
By the powers of Gray SEO .. err I mean Gray Skull
Great post with a rationale logical view on keyword usage on pages enjoyed it
I read a post and it is very informative but I dont understand that people still use the keywords many time and get it ranked.As you said that H!,H2 and H3 is not important much but Now Google give weightage to Onpage factors more.
That's basically combining keyword repetition with common sense. But then again, some people miss common sense. ;)
has a bit of an old timely feel reviewing keyword density theories
It seems like this Whiteboard Friday was a comprehensive guide that finally puts keyword density to rest.
Extremely informative nonetheless.
thanks Rand
What about if we use Exact Match keyword in the title and in body few times, does it will leads to over optimization??
Hey Rand, great stuff but I have one question...
I see a lot of different opinions on using the same keyword targets on DIFFERENT pages and have even heard CMI mention that they repeatedly target a list of 50 kws with blog posts. I always assumed this would be keyword cannibalization..which is right???
Thanks!
Hi Ricky, I don't see anything wrong in this tactic. We should always write content on topics, and through those topics we can target our keywords.
I'm getting started in SEO, what videos you guys recommend me or articles, thanks and keep making awesome videos.
Some tools say that between 1 and 3% is the correct volume of keywords inside <body> tag.
I really enjoyed this article. Especially the video. It took me a long time of reading articles and doing lots of experiments on my website to learn about 85% of what was covered here. Really nice!!!
Thanks for the great WBF.
What do you think about the need to use all of the common synonyms for the keywords being targeted? Whilst I know that Google can interpret intent and semantics, do synonyms help with the topic modeling?
If so, can you get in trouble for keyword stuffing if you overdo the use of synonyms?
Thanks in advance for the help!