Keyword density tools create busy work

Recently someone emailed me asking about a keyword density tool flagging a lot of problem content on their product pages. They wanted help to appease the tool and that got me ranting interested.

What is a keyword density tool?

Basically keyword density tools count words.

How many times does boy show up in the content? girl? cat? dog?

They'll often group multiple words together so you'll see fuzzy cat, black cat, and smelly cat also counted.

Then they do some basic statistics to figure out how often cat appears on the page. The idea is to write about your keywords a lot, but not too much.

What value does a keyword density tool provide?

None.

Or more generously, about as much as a cat underfoot while carry a basket of laundry upstairs.

Measuring the wrong thing

While these tools can be useful to see how often words are used, no search engines really cares anymore.

With stemming (cat, cats) and synonyms (cat, feline, house overlords), basic counting is irrelevant these days. They mattered back in the '90s and '00s but went out of usage long ago.

They can help as writing tools but let's be honest, they aren't ever used at that stage.

The bigger problem is they trick you into thinking the ratio of keyword usage matters. As if getting your keyword to exactly 10.42% of the pages content you'll unlock a magical ranking factor.

Narrator: you won't.

Search engines have never said how many times keywords should be used nor are they programmed into the algorithms. As you repeat something in natural writing, the intent will come out. That's what the algorithms target.

There's no magic number.

A page listing every breed of cat could have 50% or even 80% density for the keyword cat. That would freak out keyword density tools. "TOO HIGH, EMERGENCY [flailing robot arms]". But it's relevant and natural and search engines would probably love that page.

The Root Problem

The problem is that these tools get elevated in the eyes of people creating and optimizing content.

Those people end up wasting time to dial in the perfect number and end up making their content read like a early 2020's AI.

More time spent fussing with the writing, the result is crappy content, and you get to pay for the tool? Golly, sign me up.

The Lack Problem

A secondary problem is measuring density by a percentage tends to hide the lack of actual content. It's easy to game them to get any score you want if you only have 20 words on the page. Need 10%, just use the word twice. Perfect score!

The odds of Google ranking a page with only 20 words is slim to nil.

What to use instead

Instead of turning to a density tool for this, incorporate two things when creating or optimizing content:

1. Write more. Seriously, a lot more. Shopify stores are anemic when it comes to content.
2. Read what you wrote out-loud. You'll notice if you keep repeating the same words over and over. It'll feel awkward and you'll want to change it.

Ignore the keyword density tools. They are just making busywork for you with no payoff.