As Uncle Ben told a young Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility”.
In the world of SEO, keywords are power. They help you optimise your pages and get your website seen online.
However, if you abuse their power, you could end up over-optimising or “keyword stuffing” your content. Before you know it, you’ve gone from SEO hero to SEO villain. 👎
With this in mind, figuring out “how many keywords should I use for SEO” can feel like a juggling act.
Thankfully, we’ve got all the answers you need!
In this guide, I’ll demystify the use of SEO keywords so you can use them strategically and sensibly to promote your website.
Key Takeaways:
- Target one primary keyword per page, supported by relevant secondary keywords that fall under the same topic.
- Keyword density is a myth – use keywords in strategic places like the URL and headings, but write naturally for the user!
- Enrich your content further by paying attention to LSI and long-tail keyword variations.
- Ensure your content satisfies the user’s search queries by optimising for search intent and not just keyword relevancy.
How Many Keywords Should You Target for SEO?
Keywords serve as the lifeblood of SEO. They are the primary signals Google uses to categorise and index websites.
So, what’s the right number to use for your SEO campaign? 🤔
You should have one primary keyword assigned to each page you want to rank. The total number of primary keywords you target can be unlimited as long as you stick to one per page.
For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce store that sells different types of bags, and you have a category page for laptop bags. It would make sense for your primary keyword for that page to be “laptop bags”.
However, just because you have a primary keyword for the page doesn’t mean you can’t also target other related keywords. Using the same example, you could target “laptop bags for sale”, “buy laptop bags”, or “best laptop bags” as secondary keywords for the page. You can target these terms on the same page because they are variations someone looking for laptop bags generally would use. Using multiple keywords can help you capture a broader audience and improve your search visibility.
However, if you wanted to rank for keywords like “laptop bags for men” and “laptop bags for women”, these terms should be targeted with separate, dedicated pages. This is because the user has modified their laptop bag search with “for men” or “for women”, telling Google they only want to see results that match their criteria.
IMPORTANT: Don’t target the same keyword across multiple pages! This leads to the issue of keyword cannibalisation (where two of your pages compete against each other)
How Many Keywords Should You Use in SEO Content?
Ok, now you know you should only assign or target one primary keyword per page – great! 😁
But how often should you use that keyword in the page’s content?
This is where you might have heard of something called “keyword density“.
Keyword density is a metric some SEOs use to determine what percentage of a page’s word count should feature the keyword to rank well.
In my early days as an SEO copywriter, I remember being told the optimal keyword density was 1% (meaning that on a 1000-word page, the primary keyword should appear no more or less than ten times).
However, most modern SEOs would laugh at the idea of using keyword density, and rightly so.
Why? Modern search engines are more human-like in how they evaluate the relevance of web pages. These sophisticated algorithms use machine learning to understand the entire context of a page based on a wide assortment of factors.
The truth is that there is no golden ratio for keyword usage on a page. Just write naturally and make your content engaging and helpful to users – that’s it!
But you can still be clever when using keywords on your page! The trick is to focus on WHERE and HOW you use keywords rather than obsessing over the quantity.
WHERE and HOW to Use Keywords for SEO
A well-thought-out keyword strategy is essential for effective SEO. Keyword placement is all about determining the best places for your keywords to go.
Say goodbye to keyword density 👋 and hello to your new best friend: keyword placement.
While the density of keywords on a page might be a useless metric, keywords are obviously still important. After all, Google can’t index your page for a search term unless the term appears somewhere on the page.
So, what are those places? Here’s a list:
Page URL
Before search engines crawl a page, the very first thing they will interpret is the URL address. This is a logical place for your primary keyword to appear since this describes what your page’s content is about.
Title tags and meta descriptions
When you look at SERPs (search engine results pages), you’ll see the title of each page along with a brief description. This is known as the “metadata” of a page and is essential for helping search engines and users understand what the page is about, making it an essential place to use your keywords.
Optimising metadata in SEO is an art form unto itself that requires you to strike a balance between keyword relevance, character length, and enticing the user to click.
https://metatags.io/ is a great tool to help you preview how your metadata will appear in search results. Give it a try and experiment with optimising your existing title tags and meta descriptions.
Heading tags
Ok, you’ve optimised your URL and metadata – what about the content on the page itself?
The most vitally important place to have your keyword is the primary H1 heading of the page.
The <h1> is the HTML tag that identifies a section of text as the page’s primary heading. Just because your page has a big, bold heading at the top doesn’t necessarily mean it’s correctly set as H1 in the page’s HTML code, so always double-check this!
Using Google Chrome, you can easily check if your page’s heading is set as an H1 tag with these three steps:
- Highlight and right-click the heading text
- Click “inspect”
- Check if the heading text has the opening <h1> and closing </h1> tags around it
You can also quickly preview the heading structure of any page using extensions like SEO META in 1 Click (also great for seeing the page’s metadata at a glance).
But I hear you ask, what about the other page headings? These are important places for keywords as well!
Your page’s structure should follow a logical hierarchy from top to bottom, with relevant sections and subsections.
This means your H2 and H3 headings are great places to include secondary keywords, as they usually fit as subtopics.
If we go back to our old laptop bags example, then the H1 of the page could be “Laptop Bags” while a H2 could be “Why we have the best laptop bags”. The H2 incorporates the secondary keyword “best laptop bags” in a natural way as a subtopic of the main “laptop bags” keyword.
Body text
Since the body text is where the dreaded act of keyword stuffing typically takes place, you might be a little shy about using your keywords here. However, if you just write naturally, you won’t have any issues.
That said, you should try to feature your keyword prominently in the page’s introductory copy. This section of text is the first place search engines can get a more detailed summary of what your page is all about, so it would be strange if your keyword didn’t appear here.
Learn more about striking the balance between technical SEO writing and creativity.
Image alt text
Many people don’t know this, but the true purpose of image alt text is to describe the image for screen readers. This helps people with a visual impairment understand the entirety of your web page.
Because of this, alt text also plays a role in how search engines understand the content of a web page. While not as impactful as optimising your URL, metadata and headings, using keywords strategically in image alt text is a tried and true SEO tactic.
For more, check out SEJ’s guide to on-page SEO.
Advanced Techniques: LSI Keywords and Long Tail Variations
But wait, there’s more! 😲
Remember those secondary keywords? What if I told you there were other relevant keywords you could optimise your pages with?
Introducing LSI and long-tail keywords!
LSI keywords
LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords are terms conceptually related to your primary keyword and help search engines grasp the content better. These semantically related terms are not mere synonyms; they are closely tied concepts that define your page’s topic.
For example, for the primary keyword “laptop bags,” LSI keywords could be a mix of synonyms like “computer cases” or “notebook sleeves” and related concepts like “laptop accessories” or “screen protection”.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific search terms that modify highly competitive, short-tail keywords. While they have a lower search volume than their short-tail counterparts, long-tail keywords are easier to rank for. So, if you’re in a very competitive industry, ranking for multiple long-tail keywords can bring you more organic traffic than struggling to rank for a few short-tail keywords.
Strategically enriching your content with LSI and long-tail keywords helps widen your website’s relevancy and sources of traffic.
You can find these keywords using a sophisticated keyword research tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Or, if you’re strapped for cash, you can use Google autocomplete or an AI chatbot like ChatGPT to provide suggestions.
IMPORTANT: Don’t obsess over targeting all possible keyword variations! Just by writing naturally about a topic, you’re going to inadvertently include many of these phrases anyway.
Optimise for Search Intent, Not Keywords
Wait a minute, I’ve spent all this time talking about keywords, and now I’m going to throw them out the window?
Hold up! ✋ I’m not saying to ignore keywords in your SEO strategy.
What I am saying is that your frame of thinking for optimising a page shouldn’t be entirely about the mechanical relevancy of the page.
Instead, you should understand and serve the intent behind the user’s search query.
There are three main types of search intent:
- Transactional – The user wants to buy something (leather laptop bags, blue suede shoes for men, etc.)
- Informational – The user wants to find out something (how many keywords should I use for SEO, how to tie a Windsor knot, etc.)
- Navigational – The user wants to get somewhere (Reddit, Facebook login, etc.)
Understanding search intent is key to ensuring your pages actually deserve to rank for your primary keywords.
Let’s change things up and use “blue suede shoes for men” as our example keyword. Since this has a transactional intent, we know that someone using this search term is interested in comparing products and making a purchase decision.
This means when you create/optimise this page, you should create an experience that will give the users what they actually want: images of the products, specifications, descriptions, price, shipping information, reviews and testimonials, etc. They don’t need a lengthy description of what blue suede shoes are or why men should wear them – they know this already!
How Many Keywords Should You Use for SEO? It Depends!
Like everything in SEO, the answer for how many keywords you should use depends on what you’re doing.
If you’re deciding how many keywords you should target per page, the answer is simple: just one! You can have supporting secondary keywords, but they always need to fall under the umbrella of your single primary keyword that the page is being geared towards.
However, when it comes to how many times you should use a specific keyword on a page, there is no precise answer accepted by modern SEOs. Outside of key elements like the metadata, URL, and headings, the number of times you use a keyword throughout the rest of the page’s content isn’t a ranking factor.
So, pick the right keywords, sprinkle them in the right places, and you’re all set! 🙌
Thanks for reading! Also, as SEO Manager at Shark Digital, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our fin-tastic SEO services. We have all the expertise to make your keywords sing (we even have sophisticated content optimisation tools that programmatically incorporate LSI and long-tail keyword variations in your content 😉)
Frequently Asked Questions
How many SEO keywords should I use per page?
You should only target one primary keyword per page. Secondary supporting keywords can also be targeted, but they must be closely related to the primary keyword. The goal is to have a neat, logically organised site structure with one page dedicated to serving each type of user query.
Are too many keywords bad for SEO?
Yes, while keyword density is a myth, keyword stuffing certainly isn’t. If you spam your keyword throughout the page, it results in poor readability and signals to the search engine you’re trying to game the system rather than help users.
Is 500 words enough for SEO?
The optimal word count for any page depends on the average word count of competitor pages that rank for the keyword. With that said, 300-500 words of unique content is generally the bare minimum to indicate depth and relevance for a keyword.
For more, take a look at Yoast’s guide on SEO word counts.
What is the difference between primary and secondary keywords?
The primary keyword is the main topic of a page, while secondary keywords are closely related terms that support the main keyword.
