How many keywords should a page have to rank well?

How many keywords should a page have to rank well? How many times should those keywords be repeated? These are very common questions if you are starting out in SEO, and they have a simpler answer than you imagine. 

If you want to know how many keywords to put in your content and how many times they should be repeated, keep reading. In this post, I will explain it to you in detail and – yes – very easily.

But before telling you how many keywords an article should have, let’s start by defining a couple of concepts that should be clear beforehand.

What are keywords in SEO?

Keywords in SEO (or keywords) are the words that users use to search on Google.

Google recognizes the words that users use for their searches and offers them content related to them. 

When you use those same keywords to optimize a text, you help Google understand that your content is responding to the search that users do when entering the keywords in Google.

For example: if you create content to work on the keyword “houses for rent”, what you are trying to do is make Google understand that your text is related to the query for that keyword.

This way, you get all that traffic and visibility.

In the past, you had to repeat a keyword a lot in your content for Google to capture the relationship between keyword and text. This repetition sought to increase the density of keywords, a factor of on-page SEO that has a lot to do with the way we use a keyword.

But, repeating a word like “house” is not the same as attacking a long tail keyword with 5 terms, the text will end up sounding very strange.

For this reason, and for other reasons, you have to take care of keyword density, but what is keyword density exactly?

What is keyword density in SEO?

Keyword density is the proportion with which a keyword is repeated with respect to the total number of words in a text.

The more a keyword is repeated in a text, the greater its density. Which (in theory) should function as a sign of its importance.

Something like: “ Google, pay attention to this word, see how much I repeat it .”

Although it used to be crucial to have a high density of keywords so that Google understood what content was about, today it is not a significant factor.

Rather, the essential thing today is to know how to locate the keywords and give richness to the text with semantic SEO, entities, and synonyms. 

Google can now understand content by its context, not only by the repetition of a specific keyword. So it won’t reward sites that do so.

How many keywords should you put per web page?

You can put from a single keyword to more than 20 to 50 or as many as your content allows.

Of course, here I am referring to different keywords, for example:

“buy shoes” and “buy cheap shoes”

Using both keywords will not make your content seem forced, as long as you enter them with good judgment.

In conclusion: put as many keywords as the text allows organically and as long as they are relevant to the content. 

And no, this does not mean that you should repeat each one 10 times for each text; rather, include them strategically.

If you are just starting out in creating SEO content, try to use one main keyword and at least two related ones.

Then, as you feel more comfortable with the inclusion and optimization of keywords in a text, you can increase the proportion.

Now, once you choose them and decide to include them in your content, how many times should you repeat it for Google to catch it and improve your positioning? Let’s see it.

How many times should a keyword be repeated to position well?

It is best that the keyword is not repeated more than 10 times in a 1000-word text. That is, it does not exceed a density of 1 or 2%.

But be careful, because you will never know for sure what the ideal density is until you take a look at the results page for the keyword you will attack.

If the ranked sites have an average density higher than 1%, then that’s what you should aim for. Measure keyword density easily

SE Ranking’s on-page SEO analyzer will allow you to easily know the keyword density of your content.

No calculations, no formulas, no errors.

Beyond this, remember: it’s not about repeating a keyword just for the sake of it. Repetition in itself will serve no purpose.

Matt Cutts, head of Google search, already warned about this a few years ago. At that time, he clarified that Google no longer gives as much importance to the number of times a keyword is repeated and that after two appearances it has much less weight for the algorithm.

And this was in 2011. Imagine how much Google has refined since then.

So—just in case you were wondering—how many times should you repeat a keyword in your text? 

The number of times the results page is repeated on average across sites. As always, it’s best to use your competitors to understand what Google is ranking for.

This recommendation also applies if you are wondering how many keywords to put on a web page.

Look at what the competition that is already positioned is doing, try to understand their strategy, and see what you can improve. Based on this data, you will have the average for both your keywords and the density of each one.

Above all, focus on creating quality content and paying close attention to the type of keywords you use, some can be repeated more naturally, while others (such as long tail) are very obvious due to their length.