It’s very obvious and apparent that one major technique in SEO — is to stuff a bunch of similar and same keyword phrases in a page that one wants to rank well for. However, keyword stuffing to achieve a high keyword density is pointless and this post will explain why.

Keyword density & stuffing — summed up

Many webmasters claim that there is an optimum level (or percentage) of keyword phrases compared to the rest of their content to use — usually around 2-4% (in Google). Many times in Yahoo or even MSN/Live.com, you can use a much larger percentage and rank much better.

However, going for too high of a keyword density can be hazardous to your health (or maybe just your site’s). A large keyword density can be considered search engine spam or even blackhatseo.

Getting a huge keyword density without stuffing

Google and other search engines are getting close to over analyzing websites. So, what do they analyze? They place certain weight to certain phrases within certain HTML tags.

• Put your phrase just once in <h1> tags, but make sure it is only once and try to make it slightly different from the phrases in your <title> tags.
• Do not stuff your alt=”" attributes either. The sites that are optimized the best are ones that only display one phrase in each image’s alt attribute.
• Make sure to use nice long, descriptive keywords and phrases in links and in their relative title attributes (i.e., title=”")
• Use <i>, <b>, <em>, & <strong> for incorporating phrases. Google understands all of these methods.
• Using lists of keyword phrases in lists certainly can’t hurt (i.e., <ul>, <ol>). This list you are reading is a good example of that.
• I’ve also have had excellent experiences with putting keyword phrases that are embedded in the table-header (<th>keywords and phrasing</th>).

By far, the title tags and header tags are most important, and certainly more weight is given to them. Make sure you mix up the way you use your key phrases.

Best of luck

If you look at this page, I use nice long and descriptive <h3> tags that incorporate similar phrases. Always keep in mind that search engines generally are quite able to analyze keyword phrases embedded in nice and simple HTML tags (that’s been around awhile) — hint, hint.