Keyword Stuffing - How much is too much?

[RoyCooper]

I keep reading that we should write in a natural way and I get that.

But at some point there must be a percentage which is considered unacceptable. I've read 2.5% before and I've kept that in mind.

But some tools seem to consider 5%, if I'm not mistaken. I guess we should go for the lowest percent to be on the safe side?

Can we recover for penalties easily or it's almost impossible? Imagine you use a keyword too much and Google penalizes you. How long can it take to recover after you fix things?

Website Auditor makes references to how many keywords should exist specifically on headers (maximum 8 in H2 headers, if I recall correctly) and that webpages should stick to around 4199 words total...I've never read this type of detail before, how did they get to this or can we call this bullshit (a little anyway)?.

 

[Nut-Nights]

Keyword stuffing can f**k your domain, you need to test lots of things to get good results with keyword stuffing. Anything more than 2.5 % is consider too much by Gurus.

 

[dhia27]

A good advice is to read your article many times and judge yourself if the keyword is stuffed. Then, tweak it until you feel a random reader won't feel the stuffing.
BTW, 5% is high as well as 2.5%.

 

[Cashback]

Pure clean SEO advise is to use one keyword max 9 per page.
This is golden standard.% is bull&&&&.
Now to avoid considering spam use in front and on end of sentences LSI or some low competition keywords.
And yes text to be at least 400+ words.
Hope I help.

 

[RoyCooper]

I've kept it below 2% actually.
Thing is that page has approximately 4240 words. So the keyword is repeated some 60 times, more or less, on the body of the text and headers combined. Since it's lower that even 2% I thought it would be ok.
Guess I need to change that ASAP.

 

[hacko]

Get your meta and headings right and you don't even need to have the keyword once (mentioned in that particular order of words).

 

[RoyCooper]

Pure clean SEO advise is to use one keyword max 9 per page.
This is golden standard.% is bull&&&&.
Now to avoid considering spam use in front and on end of sentences LSI or some low competition keywords.
And yes text to be at least 400+ words.
Hope I help.

Any more of those maximum number of words guidelines I should know of?
I mean where did that rule of no more than 9 words come from?

 

[GReaperas]

As a general rule create pages that are readable and quality content. Keep your keyword density between 0.5 and 2.5% including the title and headings and when possible make them longer than 500 words.

 

[heopas]

I've kept it below 2% actually.
Thing is that page has approximately 4240 words. So the keyword is repeated some 60 times, more or less, on the body of the text and headers combined. Since it's lower that even 2% I thought it would be ok.
Guess I need to change that ASAP.

You repeat the same keyword 60 times on your page?.....Is your website designed for real readers or search engines? And I guess that since you are using WA you have a % also for bold, italic and anchor text as the tool suggests....

Look, there is no magic % number for keyword density....Also, I have never understood either, how the tool recommends the number of words you should have. Ask yourself "Have you ever read a 4240 word article? Why your readers do that?

Don't be obsessed about keyword density...Your website must be first for real users and then for search engines.

 

[T2tkid]

Get your meta and headings right and you don't even need to have the keyword once (mentioned in that particular order of words).

Agreed with this. I saw a site targeting medium/high competitive KWs, he only has the KWs in meta and heading. And he is ranking well. There is no need for keyword stuffing.

 

[RoyCooper]

You repeat the same keyword 60 times on your page?.....Is your website designed for real readers or search engines? And I guess that since you are using WA you have a % also for bold, italic and anchor text as the tool suggests....

Look, there is no magic % number for keyword density....Also, I have never understood either, how the tool recommends the number of words you should have. Ask yourself "Have you ever read a 4240 word article? Why your readers do that?

Don't be obsessed about keyword density...Your website must be first for real users and then for search engines.

OK first thing's first:

Actual Key Word count: 47
Actual number of words on that webpage: 4200

Well the thing is I wrote the webpage (not so much an article I guess?) naturally as there are many things involving my keyword to talk about. My key word is a profession by the way. I think that's what makes it so lengthy.

I didn't have any tool telling me to use it 47 times, they just came naturally. I say the word every 2/3 paragraphs, sometimes even more spaced then that. Since the text is long the keyword gets "diluted" and accounts for 1.1% of the total text.

Nevertheless, I spent a good amount of time yesterday getting synonyms which I will replace the keyword with and hopefully that'll help.

In the end I think we can talk about how the text is too long, but percentage wise or even reading it it doesn't seem like I keep saying the same thing over and over again.

Which brings me to another point. What is then considered the optimal amount of words approximately? WebSite Auditor seem to think the maximum should be 4199 words. Where did they come up with that?

Also are there any free tools you'd recommend to check if I got penalized by Google?

 

[DKolen]

There`s no real 'golden number' for that, but anything over 2% looks as too much, in most cases. However, there are two things I`d recommend - firstly, revise the content objectively to see if it looks stuffed or unnatural in any way, and if it`s actually readable. Secondly - go for related longtails and phrase, support the keywords contextually and mix them with other topically relevant words - that`s what Google evaluates, and not the raw keyword per page ratio. It`s getting smarter than that.

 

[heopas]

Which brings me to another point. What is then considered the optimal amount of words approximately? WebSite Auditor seem to think the maximum should be 4199 words. Where did they come up with that?

To be honest I don't know....I also use WA for my audits and never use this recommendation from them. Also, there is no optimal amount for words in a page or article. Everybody says that longer articles rank better and there is a small or big truth about that because you can easily optimise those pages for more than one keyword. I have personally ranked many 500 words articles for many high competition keywords using high quality backlinks. So, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle...

Now if you want to check if you have overoptimized your keywords, there is a great article with 5 free overoptimization tools here: http://dailyseoblog.com/5-free-seo-tools-to-check-seo-over-optimization/

 

[Jeepy]

Just google any term that might result with wikipedia on first page, probably in first 3 positions.
now open the site without CSS (there are free toolbars to do this)
thats how google bots see this site.

Ctrl+A (select all) and copy
now paste that content to any keyword density analyzer tool, do not use "check url" but paste the content on ur own and search for keyword density on the keyword you searched in google
results? 4-5% of keyword density of whole page.
(btw wordpress yoast etc plugins offer keyword density of a post feature - that is good if its 2%)
but that 2% of post is like 0.5% of page and its gay.

 

[jackteam]

I keep reading that we should write in a natural way and I get that.

But at some point there must be a percentage which is considered unacceptable. I've read 2.5% before and I've kept that in mind.

But some tools seem to consider 5%, if I'm not mistaken. I guess we should go for the lowest percent to be on the safe side?

Can we recover for penalties easily or it's almost impossible? Imagine you use a keyword too much and Google penalizes you. How long can it take to recover after you fix things?

Website Auditor makes references to how many keywords should exist specifically on headers (maximum 8 in H2 headers, if I recall correctly) and that webpages should stick to around 4199 words total...I've never read this type of detail before, how did they get to this or can we call this bullshit (a little anyway)?.

In Simple word, Just use your Main keyword 6 times in 2500 words content.

 

[xinga]

There really is no easy answer to that.

Keyword density cannot be an absolute number!!

When a typical journalist writes an article about Big Boobs, he will use large tits in the next sentence and probably juicy udders in the third - always trying to keep it interesting.
This is what Google probably expects these days: Lots of permutations within the same semantic domain.

But here comes the big caveat: By content comparsion among the top results & other relevant corpus, google most probably knows the expected keyword frequency and long tail distribution for any given keyword. And these vary based on the available lexicon in any given language.

What does it mean:

In an article targeting big boobs, google might expect a KW density of maybe 0,5 Percent, simply because there are so many alterations (see above)

In an article about some small town in Utah called "Backwater Town 95" Google might expect a KW desnity of 5 Percent, simply because there is no other way to say "Backwater Town 95" (unlike New York, big apple, home of the UN, largest city in the US and so on)
Same would be true if you are writing about commerical keywords like "shaver". It would be quite unnatural to write a sentence like:

"This is, generally speaking, the best shaver for men. But you might want to focus on a less expensive electrical razor gadget. As far as inexpensive automatic shaving aids are concerened, the RaZ2017 is your best bet!"

If you think about KW density in absolute terms, your SEO efforts are probably doomed ;-)

 

[Y4mSolja]

Less than 3% is ok

 

[RoyCooper]

There really is no easy answer to that.

Keyword density cannot be an absolute number!!

When a typical journalist writes an article about Big Boobs, he will use large tits in the next sentence and probably juicy udders in the third - always trying to keep it interesting.
This is what Google probably expects these days: Lots of permutations within the same semantic domain.

But here comes the big caveat: By content comparsion among the top results & other relevant corpus, google most probably knows the expected keyword frequency and long tail distribution for any given keyword. And these vary based on the available lexicon in any given language.

What does it mean:

In an article targeting big boobs, google might expect a KW density of maybe 0,5 Percent, simply because there are so many alterations (see above)

In an article about some small town in Utah called "Backwater Town 95" Google might expect a KW desnity of 5 Percent, simply because there is no other way to say "Backwater Town 95" (unlike New York, big apple, home of the UN, largest city in the US and so on)
Same would be true if you are writing about commerical keywords like "shaver". It would be quite unnatural to write a sentence like:

"This is, generally speaking, the best shaver for men. But you might want to focus on a less expensive electrical razor gadget. As far as inexpensive automatic shaving aids are concerened, the RaZ2017 is your best bet!"

If you think about KW density in absolute terms, your SEO efforts are probably doomed ;-)

That was pretty insightful.
Thanks.

 

[Parker2010]

Mate: Keyword stuffing doesn't work at all... write in natural manner with focus on your keywords, write articles/ blogs with 800-1000 words with attractive titles, facts, What, Why, Where, How, When, Tips etc.

 

[mickyfu]

A good advice is to read your article many times and judge yourself if the keyword is stuffed. Then, tweak it until you feel a random reader won't feel the stuffing.
BTW, 5% is high as well as 2.5%.

5% is too high, oh well looks like my articles from Natasha Nixon are fucked then.