We get asked this question often. It’s not a bad question if you’re keen for your content to appear high up on Google. But it’s not the best question. We’re going to answer “how many times should you use a keyword on a page?” but before we can answer that, there are a couple of other things we need to consider. And by the time we’ve considered the other things, you may no longer need to ask how many times you should use a keyword on a page.
At Disquiet Dog, we've been saying forever that your content needs to be great for Google, but also interesting and engaging for real people to read and enjoy. If you only write a spew of keywords in the hopes of hitting the top spot, you're more likely to get penalised by Google for being so spammy. You’re also likely to be missing the point.
That said, if you write effusively without so much as a keyword in mind, it may be a masterpiece, but Google might not immediately know what to do with it, how to classify it, and who to serve it to.
What Google is adding to the mix
Let’s remember that, apart from generating tons of revenue for itself, Google is trying to do one thing. It’s trying to give the world what it wants. I mean, you can’t fault that.
To fulfil its side of the bargain, it provides the world’s favourite search engine which people use some 5.6 billion times a day. The rest though, is up to the individuals and organisations out there who are supplying the answers to the planet’s search queries. And the problem is that on average, they are not very good at it. And this is your problem too.
We’re not saying you’re bad at writing content, we wouldn’t dare. But it’s partly why “How many times should you use a keyword on a page?” is the wrong question.
You’ll only get your content to rank highly if it’s brilliant
We’re all about empowering you to create great content for yourself, because want you to be independent, not reliant on us for ever more. That means we regularly find ourselves in conversations about producing great content that really stands out.
Take something simple like “how to poach an egg” (it’s always evaded me). To find out, I google that phrase and find I have a choice between watching a video or reading how to do it. Personally, I’ll take the video every day.
Then in the first couple of organic search results I have a choice between How to Make Perfect Poached Eggs – 3 Ways by Jamie Oliver, and How to Cook Basic Poached Eggs by the Egg Farmers of Canada. I go for Jamie Oliver because he’s a bit of an icon, he’s giving me three ways to try and he’s offering me perfect poached eggs, not just basic ones.
It’s a random example but that way we get to be in a consumer mindset and you realise that as a consumer, you do naturally select the best version you can, when given a choice. And if there’s one thing you have on Google, it’s choice.
Thinking like your client is more important than using the right keyword
Now you don’t need to hire a celebrity every time you want to promote your thing. In fact, in the poached egg example, had Jamie offered me only basic eggs whilst the team at the Canadian egg marketing board offered me three routes to perfection, I probably would have switched to them.
So what does that tell us?
You need a really clear persona in mind. Let’s stick with the eggs. I’m a fairly confident cook, but just haven’t poached eggs very often. I looked for “how to poach an egg”, and yet the top video result was “how to make perfect poached eggs”. My intent in typing in that phrase was to find out “how to do it”, i.e. I wanted the practical skills and tips. Google served me the option of not only learning how to do it, but how to do it perfectly. I got a free upgrade, so Google interpreted my needs and provided me with something better.
If I run those two keywords through some software, I see that “how to make the perfect poached egg” attracts 1,900 searches on average per month, whilst “how to poach an egg” attracts a colossal 33,100 searches on average per month. And yet, when I typed in the more popular phrase, I still got served with a video that had a much less popular title.
There’s a lot of meh out there
Watching a webinar with Gary Illyes and John Mueller, both Webmaster Trends Analysts at Google, talking to Izzy Smith at this year's BrightonSEO, they essentially make the point that when it comes to creating content, there is a lot of ‘meh, s’alright’ content out there.
For my search for how to poach eggs, Google offered me the choice of 349 videos and 210 text-based articles, before saying “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 210 already displayed”.
Illyes and Mueller confessed that whilst Google’s servers can hold data on some 200 trillion documents, they don’t have infinite storage, they can’t index them all and about 60% of the content out there is duplicated anyway, so why bother indexing it?
So if you’re about to sit down, with your perfect, well-considered keyword phrase in mind, how are you going to make sure that what you create is not as bland and samey as the other umpteen hundred pieces of content?
Be original
Don’t steal, duplicate or otherwise grab your entire idea from someone else. You’re just wasting your time and Google’s. There will come a time that this stuff won’t even get indexed.
Be your brand
Even if you are talking about the same thing as everyone else in your sector, infuse it with all the things that matter to you as an individual or as an organisation. Wear your heart, and your values and beliefs.
Talk to a real person
Think who best typifies our target reader out of all the people you know, and write it for them. That should ensure it’s comes from human to human and feels authentic.
Think in personas
Go further and talk to the fears, hopes, wishes, beliefs, character traits (we do a whole training course on persona mapping), and tick those boxes too as you go.
Start with what’s important
You can see how this is starting to be a bit of a mission. It doesn’t have to add much time onto the job and these steps mean it should actually help and make a difference, so you won’t be wasting time. But do prioritise what content you write, and start with what your tribe needs the most. FAQs are a great place to start (we do a talk on How to transform your SEO with FAQs).
Focus on the intention behind the search
Go as deep as you can into the intention people might be exhibiting in the search string they are using. Which search term best finds that sweet spot between what your kind of people need the most, and what you feel best placed to help them with? Write that one.
Soooo how many times should you use a keyword on a page?
With all that in mind, you’re now hopefully looking at creating a piece of content which someone wants to read, and that’s the most important thing of all. There are plenty of tools out there that can tell you if your content is optimised, but they will often only tell you the keyword density of the one specific phrase you tell it to look out for (I’m thinking about SEO applications like Yoast here).
What’s more important than how many times you use a keyword on a page is how much you stick to the search intent of your likely user. We’re getting on towards the end of this article, and I’m still talking about how many times you should use a keyword on a page. I’ve not wandered off too much, and the section in the middle was still relevant to that point.
If you’re writing about how to stay safe on a university campus in London during lockdown, don’t find yourself reminiscing about your time at university in Liverpool and how you managed to collect so many traffic cones. A bit of a technique is to keep re-approaching your topic theme and come at it from different angles. Quite naturally you’ll find that you’re referring to the most relevant keywords, because you’ve kept to the subject in hand and you’re still thinking about your user. And that leads to our final tip for now…
Think big and joined up
Think encyclopedically. We say that a lot. Connect your content together, create networks of interlinked usefulness. Focus on lovely nichey stuff that only you know or care about. Go nerdy. Do detail because you love it. In so doing you’ll find your following. Come back to your content time and again to extend it, update it, nurture it and adapt it – to changing times, to this year’s versions, to new opinions or new user questions. Keep it current, relevant and fresh.
But how many times should you use a keyword on a page?
You’ve really missed the point.
