Keyword density

Keyword Density is Stone Age News now.

Search engines don't bother it at all. Unless your content look like that it has been written by a robot.

Honestly, don't worry about keyword density. In my opinion it just doesn't matter. Produce good content thatat your visitors love and it will have the right keyword density.

Google has far more sophisticated ways of telling if your content is good. Two of them that you can check regularly are: bounce rate and time on page. If people leave your website after three seconds that's a really bad sign. If people leave after visiting only one page of your website that's also a bad sign. Work on these two things and keyword density will take care of itself.

As others have said, keyword density was a fleeting SEO theory that may or may not have worked half a decade ago, before Panda and subsequent algorithm filters were introduced. Nowadays, intentional keyword repetition could bury a page in the rankings.

Put the phrase you want to rank for in the text of the page at least once. That's it, and if it happens to appear more than once, so be it. Just don't do it on purpose. Put a variation of the phrase in an H1 or H2/H3 tag. Put it in the title tag, preferably at the beginning along with some other text to get people's attention (i.e. Discount Widgets - Huge Sale This Month & Free Shipping!)

More important, is getting related keyword phrases on the page that Google might expect to see. Enter the keyword phrase that you want to rank for in a Google search, scroll down to the bottom of search and look for the "Searches Related To" section. Get as many of those on that page as you can without it sounding awkward - especially any words that are in bold. Even if you have to drop words or re-arrange the phrase, it is better than not including those words.

Other than saying it varies from term to term.. I have seen 1.5 up to 4.0... As much as everyone wants to say that this is old stuff.. we all will say your page will not rank as well if at all if the density is to high ( stuffing ) so mathematical logic would say that there is also not enough, and a sweet spot.

Keep in mind, yes, you can rank without the exact term being there but you are relying on synonyms at that point. Google states that +/- 70% of all search has Synonym iterations. As you get into lower comp terms Synonyms are less present.. meaning you are better to match when possible.

The other variable at play here would be " Keyword Proximity " Not as important with Google, as it is with Bing. The way the 2 separate the page into blocks ( HTML5 Header Body, Sidebar, footer ) will show the use of the term through out the page vs loaded towards the top.

Google is a pretty standard 4 or 5 block page breakdown where as Bing has 4 or 5 sections in the body alone... don't believe me look up the patents for yourself.

Here is another thing to consider... Google more so than any other company ( that I follow ) that produces Patents at the rate that they do... they refer to and update previous patents. Basically what they are doing is showing what they were using, how they are adjusting it, and then laying out how they will be using that along with what is new. All of the major updates in Google patent history have worked this way.

The Patent above, I personally would place into that category ( major update ) it is inline with the use of links, it is inline with RankBrain, with Mobilegeddon, the whole pigeon series, Authorship, Hummingbird, Caffeine, Personalized search, and my favorite - Florida.

The patent process by its very nature actually gives us a pretty decent look into the mechanics of how a search engine works.... AND its public record.. there is no hiding it - As I was referring to above when a patent only has 8 listings displayed ( No question the Serp listing is manually manipulated ) If its worth the effort to keep to a minimum.. I would say its worth looking at.

Me personally... I get Google is ever changing - I don't think there is any denying that. We actually have access to data literally ahead of time in the directions they may go, and yet to those that practice SEO - no one wants to hear this stuff. Something I do not find overly surprising.

There simply is more to SEO than link building... Link building for say Bing works to a degree but not to much - Google has the whole concept on lock down right? Which then drives you to figuring out Seeds and whatever else.

Finding common elements across platforms is a pretty good thing I would say. SEO in terms of most forums and pretty much every blog on the subject in the world is more like GEO ( Google Engine Optimization ) than anything else.

Google, Bing, Yandex and the few others all run multiple algorithms independently and concurrently in an order to display pages. So to understand what it is they are looking for to actually list a page in a SERP gives you a better idea of what you need to do to actually get a page ranked. And its a multitude of variables that are looked at. ( some say 200 ) So any little gain that can be made when developing content or developing structure, is something to look at.

Keyword density is one of the most important concepts in SEO. It is the amount of a keyword you use in the content of your site or web page. Google search engine recommend a keyword density to 1-2% while Yahoo allows a website that has 3%.

There's no ideal - Said Matt Cutts

But make use of the partial match, LSI keywords. Use keywords very naturally as many as times you can. Again NATURALLY

Although many SEO tools still like to point out that certain words are used too often.

...sometimes there is no synonym so you must use the word a lot.