How many keywords is too many?
-
Since it seems it takes so long for Google to revisit a changed page, we sort of loose track of changes made trying to optimize a specific URL for a keyword.
Any sense of how many times is the optimum number of times to use a single keyword on a single page? I'm referring to the total including Title, Description, Content, Alt=. The whole shooting match.
I have seen our Google results improve after we have removed several iterations of a keyword
Thank You
-
I agree with Mike, although I think you'll find that using a tool like ranks.nl will give you an idea if you've gone too heavy with one or the other.
Honestly from my experience, a naturally-written site about a main keyword that happens to be the subject will have said keyword appearing at about 1-2.75%
This includes bold, alt, title, url, ahref, everything.. all weighted differently by ranks.nl which is a great tool.
But use it as a secondary means. Read it first, like Mike said, to make sure it sounds human.
-
Whatever sounds natural.
There is no hard and fast number or percentage concerning keywords but if it looks like your page is trying waaaay too hard to be found for "blue widgets" or it sounds really unnatural when read out loud... then you've probably used the term too much.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is Fall In Keyword Ranking After Launch of Revamped Website Normal
After launching my redesigned website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) Google ranking has dropped significantly for competitive keywords. The previous version of the site and the new version both have approximately 450 pages. My website developer was careful to implement 301 redirects. Monitoring Google Webmaster tools it shows that Google has picked up a quantity of duplicate content. More than 950 pages or shown in their index while my site only has 450 pages. There are also certain pages which require canonical which tags my developer is in the process of implementing. The relaunch was July 10. My developer is of the opinion that this fluctuation in ranking is normal and that it will take Google about one month to reindex the new site and remove the old pages from the directory. Is this accurate? Anyone have any ideas on why my site has tanked in Google's search results? Thank you very much. Sincerely,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan Rosinsky0 -
Keywords in url - specific case question
There are a bunch of questions about keywords in the url and so far what I've gathered is that it's good to have them but keep it simple so it doesn't look stuffed. I'm working on redesigning some sites that were originally setup by a group who had no understanding of SEO (or perhaps I should say a misunderstanding) and spent a lot of time stuffing keywords EVERYWHERE. In some cases they weren't too far off but in others I think they just went overboard. One of the areas I'm trying to fix are the paths which leads to the following concerns. One of the sites has a basketball section and through the use of the Adwords keyword tool they determined that most people are searching for "basketball hoops". My first question is, how reliable are the monthly search numbers in the Adwords keyword tool? Are they accurate enough to warrant forming keyword strategies based on the results? As it relates to the url issue, the current tree for the basketball section of the site looks like this: /basketball (the landing page for the whole section, there are other sport specific pages as well) /basketball/hoops (goes nowhere. not sure why they didn't just go to /basketball-hoops/x for other pages) /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards (the systems are split into three different backboard sizes, these pages group them onto one overview page per size) /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards/specific-basketball-goal (the actual basketball goal details page with options to buy and such) So what I'm wondering about this setup is: does having /basketball/hoops take care of having the "basketball hoops" search term or would it be more effective to switch to /basketball-hoops? If it's fine to leave it at /basketball/hoops, do you think it would be beneficial to create an actual page for that path? We found that actually more people search for "basketball basket" than "basketball hoops" so maybe that would be a good page to try to make use of that term and explain maybe why people think "basket" instead of "hoop" and why we call ours "goals" or something. I tend to navigate pages by deleting path arguments and I hate when I land on a nonexistent path so I'm leaning toward changing the paths but just don't know if it's worth it at this point. Additionally, on one of the other sites, we have a domain that is the main keyword we want to rank for: swingsets.com The other company I mentioned then decided to put all of the product pages under: swingsets.com/swing-sets/{category}/{set-height}-{'swing-set'|'playset'|'swingsets'|'play-set'|etc...}/combo{#} So that comes out to look something like this: swingsets.com/swing-sets/outback/5ft-playsets/combo2 I've never liked that path setup. It looks stuffed to me, especially once they start using '5ft-swing-sets' and '6ft-play-set' on other product pages. It's inconsistent which is another issue I have since I tend to surf by path. Another issue with that setup is the final argument of combo{#} but there's nothing I can really do about that because they call the products out as combinations. The only actual product name is the "outback" part. I've been trying to come up with a better path setup for a long time now but again I'm concerned that I may just be wasting my time. The only thing I did do was make the height section consistently {height}-playsets. Is that good enough or should these paths remove /swing-sets from the beginning? The actual /swing-sets page is a good and valuable landing page but then I'm not sure if it remains valuable to keep it in the paths for the product pages afterward. Any insight into this dilemma would be appreciated. I've been stewing over this for a long time and my reasoning always becomes circular since I can see plenty of reasons for keeping them the way they are and simplifying them.
Web Design | | EscaladeSports0 -
Is the 'too many links' caused by the tags?
Hello Just got my seomoz report and decided I better start takiling things. Got a lot of 'too many links' on the report. I don't have control over website design and before I talk to designer I thought I should have a bit of an handle on what I am talking about. I've taken one page that has 483 links. Is this caused by the tags box and would it be a good idea to have it removed? http://commonwealthcontractors.com/uk-visas/tier-2-general-visas-formerly-uk-work-permits/ Regards Niamh
Web Design | | Niamh20 -
Too Many On Page Links, rel="nofollow" and rel="external"
Hi, Though similar to other questions on here I haven't found any other examples of sites in the same position as mine. It's an e-commerce site for mobile phones that has product pages for each phone we sell. Each tariff that is available on each phone links through to the checkout/transfer page on the respective mobile phone network. Therefore when the networks offer 62 different tariffs that are available on a single phone that means we automatically start with 62 on page links that helps to quickly tip us over the 100 link threshold. Currently, we mark these up as rel="external" but I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to help the situation and prevent us being penalised for having too many links on page so: Can/should we mark these up as rel="nofollow" instead of, or as well as, rel="external"? Is it inherently a problem from a technical SEO point of view? Does anyone have any similar experiences or examples that might help myself or others? As always, any help or advice would be much appreciated 🙂
Web Design | | Tinhat0 -
Broad Phrase keywords as domain name
Hello, Am new here, can you advise if its good idea to buy broad phrase keywords as domain name e.g whatisagoodwebsite.com? Thank you
Web Design | | seoatbest0 -
Too Many Links Since Mega Menu Implementation
We have an issue with our recently introduced ‘mega-menu’, which has increased our link count on all pages (as it is a global menu across the entire website). Is it acceptable to load our mega-menu drop-down content onto the page via AJAX in order to reduce the number of on-page links, leaving only the department headings as on-page links (in order to keep the user experience the same/similar)? Or is dynamic loading of link content frowned upon by Google? We would still have the ‘AJAX'd’ links available as on-page/crawlable links in the left menu of the department landing pages, by navigating via the department headings. Any help/advice that could be offered is welcomed. Thanks
Web Design | | DVCrawler0 -
Too Many On-Page Links for my Blog
Hi, I have created a SEO Moz campaign for my travel blog www.EspaceVoyage.net. The Crawl diagnostics tool raised a warning saying that for few pages I have a 'Too many on-page links'. All the problematic pages are of the following style: http://www.espacevoyage.net/2008/08/01/ http://www.espacevoyage.net/2008/08/02/ http://www.espacevoyage.net/2008/08/06/ .... I am not sure what I should do with that ... Since I continue to publish articles on that blog I imagine that that problem will keep growing and growing ... What should I do with that? Thanks P.S. That blog uses Wordpress CMS. Nancy
Web Design | | EnigmaSolution0 -
Whats the most effective way of targeting regional visitors, is it really just adding your city name at the end of your keywords?
Whats the most effective may of targeting regional visitors, is it really just adding your city name at the end of your keywords? The website i'm trying to optimize is f1plus.co.uk and the target city is aberdeen. I'm new to seo so any views or tips welcome. Thanks
Web Design | | jpc10040