No Keywords? Too Many Keywords? Solving Keyword Concerns

We know optimizing for keywords will help your site and social content show up in relevant searches. So it’s naturally tempting to try to fit as many keywords into your content as possible. After all, why not really hammer them in to make sure Google illuminates your brand to your target audience, right?

While this logic may seem sound, it doesn’t actually work that well. Though you do need keywords to improve your search rankings, if you rely on keyword stuffing, you could actually face negative consequences that could hurt your online results.

So this begs the question—how many keywords are too many? Should you opt for just a few keywords or no keywords at all? 

As digital marketing strategies usually go, there isn’t a solid, single answer to that. The Big Leap team is here to suss out why and walk you through keyword density best practices. Use these insights to elevate your content quality and user experience.

Table of Contents

Understanding Keywords: What They Are & Why They’re Important

Words people type into Google

Keywords Unveil Search Intent

Keywords Can Help Refine Your Buying Funnel

Is It Possible to Have Too Many Keywords?

What Counts as “Too Many Keywords?”

Example of Keyword Stuffing

7 Keyword Density and Best Practices

1. Conduct Up-Front Keyword Research

2. Only Target Relevant Keywords

3. Place Keywords Strategically

4. Remember the Image Alt Text

5. Disambiguate via Secondary Keywords

6. Write People-First Content

7. Understand and Capitalize on the Buyer’s Journey

eCommerce Example

Other Keyword Considerations: Leveraging AI

Work with Our Keyword Strategists

Understanding Keywords: What They Are & Why They’re Important

First, let’s set up a firm foundation on what keywords are and their role in SEO. 

If we had to condense the definition of a keyword into just five words, it would be:

Words people type into Google

When it comes down to SEO, keywords are just the words we type into the search bar. Let’s say you’re planning a vacation in Washington. You might look up “restaurants in Seattle” or “best hikes in Washington.” These are just a couple of examples of keywords.

Keywords Unveil Search Intent

When people type in keywords into the search bar, they’re searching for answers to specific queries and pain points. In other words, those keywords hold search intent. 

Google uses keywords to understand the search intent. If a webpage contains the keywords a user has searched for, Google uses those phrases as a signifier that the page may be a good search result. 

However, because Google leans on various diagnostic tools and stands firm on providing “helpful, reliable, people-first content,” it doesn’t want digital marketers to simply stuff keywords into their content.

Keywords Can Help Refine Your Buying Funnel

The key terms, phrases, and topics your audience searches for are always changing. On top of that, as consumer expectations shift, keywords may get harder to rank for.

With so many searches for one purchase, it’s essential to understand the consumer’s decision-making process so you can employ the right keywords during each buying stage. This will help your brand show up at the right place at the right time.

Is It Possible to Have Too Many Keywords?

Yes, it’s possible. Using too many keywords is often referred to as “keyword stuffing”—the practice of just jamming as many keywords as possible in a single piece of content.

We’ve all read content where we see different iterations of the same phrase repeated entirely too many times, often in ways that feel clunky or out of place. Ultimately, this will make the post less enjoyable to read, and it can strip the content of its value.

Think of it like you’re making a salad, which is your content, and your croutons are the keywords. Your salad is full of all sorts of healthy ingredients—spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, and more. A few croutons will help enhance the flavor, but adding too many ruins the salad’s nutritional value, and the meal goes from refreshing and light to tasting like stale bread.

That scenario is a good way to tell how many keywords are too many in a piece of content.

What Counts as “Too Many Keywords?”

When it comes to how many times a keyword should appear on a page, it really depends on the length of the content. Trying to fit 15 keywords into a 400-word press release isn’t going to go over so well, but adding the same number to a 2,000–word blog post is fine.

When you’re trying to decide whether your content is optimized enough or too much, keyword density will be the metric you want to watch. You never want your keyword density to go above five percent. Otherwise, your user experience could be well on its way to its demise.

Example of Keyword Stuffing

We’ve gone against all our instincts to craft a paragraph that uses a keyword-stuffing strategy for the phrase “keyword density.” Does it read naturally? Is it annoying? 

Keyword density is a way to rank high in Google for a specific query. It used to be common to use a high keyword density strategy to earn a high spot on Google’s search results, but too much keyword density is frowned upon because readers don’t like it. Google will now blacklist articles with a too-high keyword density. Therefore, use no more than a five percent keyword density rate in your content. 

For the record, that delightful bit of copy holds about a 14% solid keyword density. Yikes.

7 Keyword Density and Best Practices”

There are tools available to help you assess your keyword density and overall SEO potential for on-site content. Yoast SEO is a great one for WordPress sites, and it will give you feedback on what else you can do to potentially improve your ranking, too.

While keeping keyword density to no more than five percent is an important starting and ending place, you can get more strategic within your content by:

• Conducting up-front keyword research
• Only targeting relevant keywords
• Placing keywords strategically
• Remembering to use image alt text
• Disambiguating via secondary keywords
• Writing people-first content
• Understanding and capitalizing on the buyer’s journey

To maximize the impact of your keywords and get the most out of each use, here’s an explanation for each strategy.

1. Conduct Up-Front Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most important tasks for any SEO campaign because it allows you to see into the mind of your customer. When you find out what keywords your customers are searching for, you know their needs and what content you should create to satisfy them. 

Use eCommerce keyword research tools like SpyFu, Semrush, and Ahrefs to update key phrases on your product or service pages. These tools can offer keyword ideas, insight into how competitive a keyword is, and information on their ranking potential. 

In addition, these tools can help you sort keywords by search intent as well. For example, Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool organizes keywords by one of the following: 

• Informational
• Navigational
• Commercial
• Transactional

• Look at what keywords you’re already ranking for. How to search for keywords on your website involves using tools like Semrush’s Keyword Gap to enter your URL and get a report on all your ranking keywords. Then put these keywords into the Keyword Magic Tool to find other similar long–tail keywords. Continue this process until you have a list that works for you.
• See what keywords your competitors are going after. Look at your competitors’ keywords. Oftentimes, your competitors have done much of the legwork for you. You can quickly gain valuable insights by looking at the keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on in Google Ads. 
• Use Google’s autofill suggestions and related keywords. You probably notice how Google gives you search suggestions when entering something into the search bar. This gives insight into the product- or industry-related topics people are searching for. Use these keywords and related keywords to create content people want to read.

At the bottom of a search page, you’ll also see additional searches that have been made. This is a great keyword research tip to help you find original search terms.

• Find location-specific keywords. If your business services specific geographic locations, local search is critical and essential to keyword research. The next step to take when learning how to do keyword research is using the Google Ads Keyword Planner tool to find location-specific keywords.

In keyword planner:

1. Choose “Get search volume and forecasts.”
2. Paste in your keywords and services.
3. Change the location to your local service area.

• Look at forums related to your industry. Forums are a great place to do keyword research. Many different sites, including Reddit and Quora, will have forums related to your topic. You can learn the questions people are asking and the terms and phrases your target audience is using.

2. Only Target Relevant Keywords

It doesn’t matter if it gets 10,000 searches a month—if the keyword isn’t directly relevant to the content at hand, don’t optimize for it. 

If your chocolate chip pancakes don’t have banana, for example, don’t use “banana” as a keyword just because it’s popular. People will just click away, and Google doesn’t want to see high bounce rates. Instead, if necessary, create separate content for the “banana” keyword. Might we recommend a banana-blueberry pancake recipe? Yum!

3. Place Keywords Strategically

Keywords will often have the most impact when placed correctly. Having your main target keyword in the title and at least one subheading will have a bigger impact than putting it in the main text alone.

4. Remember the Image Alt Text

Image alt texts are a great place to include keywords you know are relevant and important to your post, but are having a hard time placing naturally within the text itself. Use this effective strategy to your advantage.

5. Disambiguate via Secondary Keywords

There’s a saying in marketing: “The more you tell, the more you sell.” 

This works for SEO as well, because by diving deeper into the content, you give Google a better chance of understanding the topic at hand. You “disambiguate” the topic by providing multiple closely related or variant keywords. 

Google expects certain keywords to go together, and some keywords can have multiple meanings. Including secondary keywords will help narrow that down, making your content all the more powerful. Essentially, you want to make sure all your bases are covered and your content has adequate depth to it.

6. Write People-First Content

To rank better on Google, write for people, not machines.

When you focus on providing the best experience for actual people, the keywords will come naturally and your SEO marketing will improve as a result. At the end of the day, how your content reads impacts the user experience. 

The synonyms and variants will be a natural part of your content, and Google will pick up on that. After all, Google is most interested in understanding how people communicate with other people—not how people communicate with computers. 

7. Understand and Capitalize on the Buyer’s Journey

Keep your ear to the ground by understanding and capitalizing on the buyer’s journey. The average B2B researcher performs possibly a dozen searches before they engage with a brand’s site. 

eCommerce Example

Let’s say you’re an online business that sells running shoes. A potential buyer’s intent during the early stages of the buying journey will likely be less defined. So they’ll use search phrases that are pretty broad or query-based (e.g., “women’s running shoes”).

As the searcher gets more confident as to what specific product they want, their keyword searches will get more specific. In the SEO world, we call these keywords long-tail keywords.

Take a look below at how searcher intent and keywords progress as they move further down the funnel, closer to a purchase. You’ll notice the keywords grow more specific as users become more confident in their purchasing options. 

“Womens running shoes”
↓
“Womens minimalist running shoes”
↓
“Womens nike minimalist running shoes”
↓
“Womens black nike minimalist running shoes”
↓
“Womens black and white nike free runs size 9” 

Thus, keywords play a pivotal role in refining the buyer’s journey. By tapping into a user’s decision-making process, you can leverage keywords to target every stage of the funnel.

Other Keyword Considerations: Leveraging AI

At Big Leap, we believe AI should be human-led and AI-assisted. AI can expedite tasks that include keyword research. Machine learning algorithms and advanced data analytics may help your team identify high-potential keywords and pull data from your competitors. 

Keep in mind, that while AI is great for keyword research, human creativity and thought must be front and center when it comes to writing your content. As AI is still yet to understand copyright infringement and privacy issues, embodying a human-centric approach is critical. AI cannot replace strategic and creative thinking with the quality and impact humans produce. After all, we’re the ones who truly understand our target audience. So it’s up to us to mold and leverage language in a way that speaks to those individuals.

Work with Our Keyword Strategists

By ensuring that your keywords are in good standing, you’ll be able to focus more on creating actionable, valuable content your audience actually wants to see, giving you more results in the long run.

Need help creating SEO content your readers will love? Learn more about the services we offer, and contact Big Leap to see how we can help you.