Howmany keywords are too many? The idealkeyword densitypreferred by both readers and search engines is around two to five percent. Even in longer pieces, the best practice is not to exceed 20 uses per webpage.
We know that optimizing for keywords will help our blog posts, Facebook updates,tweets, and site content show up in relevant searches. This presents a big opportunity, and it’s naturally tempting to try to fit as many keywords into your content online as possible. Why notreallyhammer in the point to make sure that Google gets it, right?
While this logic may seem sound in its reasoning, it doesn’t actually work thatwell. Youdoneed some keywords in your content to improve its rank in searches, but if you go too far in the other direction and rely onkeyword stuffing, you could actually face negative consequences that could hurt the impact of your campaigns.
In this post, we’re going to takea close look at the ideal ratios forkeyword densityand how this affects your content.
How Is It Possible to Have Too Many Keywords?
Using too many keywords is often referred to as“keyword stuffing,” which is the practice of just jamming as many keywords as possibleover and overinto a single post.
And if you think about it, I guarantee you can come up with a few exampleswhere keywords went wrong. We’ve all read content where we see different iterations of the same phrase repeated entirely too many times, often in ways that feel clunky or out of place. Ultimately, this will make the post less enjoyable to read, and it can actually strip the content of its value.
Think of it like you’re making a salad, which is your content, and your croutons are the keywords. Your salad is full of all sorts of healthy ingredients—spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, and more. A few croutons will help enhance the flavor, but if you add too many, it ruins thesalad’s nutritional valueandthe meal goes from refreshing and light to tasting like stale bread.
That scenario is a good way to tellhow many keywords are too manyin a piece of content.
What Are the Consequences of Keyword Stuffing?
It can be temptingto use as many keywords as possible as many times as possible.The hope is toshow Google that your article or infographic or eBook isperfectfor thequeryand should definitely be ranked firstin the search results.
In reality, the opposite effect is likely to happen.
As we discussed above, users are likely to spotkeyword stuffingand be frustrated by it, even if they don’t consciously know exactly what you’re doing. The content will likely be difficult and clunky to read, and in many cases, comes off reading like a weird, high-pressuresales pitch.
All in all, not a good strategy. It doesn’t matter if users can find the content if it annoys them so much they won’t come back to read anymore.
Here’s the thing though:If you go aboutkeyword stuffingaggressively, your audience likelywon’tfind the content. It’s actually considered a “black-hat” strategy, and Google has learned to recognize it.
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Now, Google doesn’t want to see overly optimized sites that focus more on SEO tricks than on creating content users want to see.Thistrick can actually result in yourGooglerankingdecreasingas a result of using too many keywords,instead of seeing a boost.
What Counts as “Too Many Keywords?”
When it comes to how many keywords you should be targeting, it really depends on the length of the content. Trying to fit15keywords into a 400-word press release isn’t going to go over so well, but adding the same number to a 2,000–word blog postisfine.
To reiterate what we said at the beginning of this article—when you’re trying to decide whether your content is optimized enough or too much,keyword densitywill be the metric you want to watch. You never want yourkeyword densityto go abovefive percent, and keeping it in thetwo to four percentrangeis typically the sweet spot that Google and readers like to see.
To make it crystal clear, we’ve gone against all our instincts to craft a paragraph that uses a keyword-stuffing strategy for the phrase “keyword density.” Does it read naturally? Is it annoying? Do you feel betrayed?
Keyword densityis a way to rank high in Google for a specific query. It used to be common to use a highkeyword densitystrategy to earn a high spot on Google’s search results, but too muchkeyword densityis frowned upon because readers don’t like it. Google will now blacklist articles with a too-highkeyword density. Therefore, use no more than a five percentkeyword densityrate in your content.
For the record, that delightful bit of copy is about 14 percent solid keyword. Someone let Google know that it’sintentionalkeyword stuffing, okay?
