Simple on-site SEO - bet practice for keywords in content

[BobGW]

Hello,

The Moz on-page grader will give a grade of A if the keyword appears exactly in the content at least one time.

If there are 500 words and a lot of it is about the main keyword, what have you found to be important to look for beyond the on-page grader - beyond the one exact instance of the keyword? I'm specifically talking just about keywords in the content.

My guess is that it needs to occur 3 or 4 times in different forms and at least once exactly, but the on-page grader doesn't require it.

What have you found?

[Saijo.George]

I usually try and have them in the Meta Title, Main Title ( preferably in H1 ),  Sub titles as well. ( as long it makes sense to include them there )

[MattAntonino]

We've found that "keyword density", as it used to be, isn't really a positive ranking factor any more.  Like meta keywords, our testing shows that 1, 2, 3 times ... that's fine.  15, 20, 30 - that leads to problems.  Anything else really doesn't matter.  You can use it - don't overuse it.  It's one of those things ... not really positive, just don't kill it to death.  (We had a client put in a keyword over 500 times on one page. And didn't rank. SHOCKING.)

[WilliamKammer]

Matt is correct. Keyword density is no longer a thing that helps positively with ranks, in my opinion. It can hurt you if it is overused though.

If you're worried about content being naturally over-stuffed, that's a valid concern. If your client is in the pizza industry, how do you not use the word "pizza" all the time? The answer is: creatively. It'll be different with every industry, like with pizza, focus on toppings, dough, cheese, sauce, etc. to dilute the density.

Don't force it in, make it look natural, keep it in the H1, title, URL, and other best practices, but try to mention it only when required in the content to reduce mentions. Anything above one mention in the body isn't required, but sometimes quality of content requires it to be mentioned more.

[BobGW]

Interesting! Is this a hummingbird thing where it only need to be mentioned directly once as long as the content is on topic?

[SEO5Team]

Try not just focusing on the exact keyword but also closely related keywords. If the article is well written and picks up good social traction , you might end up ranking for different closely related keywords, not just the main keyword.