Content - Themes - Keyword Density

[jaffstar]

I writing content based on various topics. Each essay is about 500 words. I have heard that you should maintain a keyword density of 3%, although repeating the keyword more than 7 times in the copy could be considered spam by google.

What is the happy balance?

[BigDave]

Forget all that unless you are writing for a really specific word or phrase, and you are willing to do everything else necessary to rank well for that phrase. Keyword density is a fairly minor factor.

Write good natural content for the user and you will almost always do better from the variety of words that people will naturally use while searching.

[jaffstar]

I wrote great content for users, packed with great information. The only problem repeated the main targeted keyword 10 times in a 580 word essay. Is this too much?

When choosing a targeted keyword as " yellow widgets", you should repeat it >10 times?

[BigDave]

Keyword density, in itself, has a very minimal influence on your ranking, either positive or negative. Stop worrying about that aspect till you have taken care of everything else. The keyphrase in the title can have more of an impact than density. So can a couple of links with the keyphrase in the anchor text.