Google has put out a new Webmaster Help video, featuring (as usual) head of web spam Matt Cutts. This time, Cutts is answering his own question, rather than a user-submitted question.
The question is: What is the ideal keyword density: 0.7%, 75, or 77%? Or is it some other number?
âA lot of people thereâs some one recipe, and you can just follow that like baking cookies, and if you follow it to the letter, youâll rank number one,â he says.
Shockingly, thatâs not the case.
Thereâs no set percentage for keyword density, that will help you rank, according to Cutts. âThatâs not the way that search engine rankings work,â he says.
âThe way that modern search engines, or at least Google, are built,â says Cutts with a slight chuckle, âis that the first time you mention a word, you know, âHey, thatâs pretty interesting. Itâs about that word.â The next time you mention that word, âoh, OK. Itâs still about that word.â And once you start to mention it a whole lot, it really doesnât help that much more. Thereâs diminishing returns. Itâs just an incremental benefit, but itâs really not that large.â
âAnd what youâll find is that if you continue to repeat stuff over and over again, then youâre getting in danger of keyword stuffing, or gibberish and those kinds of things.â
âSo, the first one or two times you mention a word – that might help with your ranking. Absolutely. But just because you can say it seven or eight times, that doesnât mean that it will necessarily help your rankings.â
âThe way to think about it is this,â Cutts wraps up. âThink about the keywords that youâd like to have in your copy. Make sure your copy is long enough that you can work those keywords into your copy in a natural way and not an artificial way. And my recommendation is to either read it aloud or read it to someone else or have someone else read it, and sort of say, âDo you spot anything thatâs artificial or stilted or that doesnât quite read right?â And if you can read through the copy, and have it read naturally where a person isnât going to be annoyed by it, then youâre doing relatively well.â
Another tip for surviving Panda? Donât annoy readers.