Myth: hit an ideal keyword density and you'll rank

Myth: hit an ideal keyword density and you'll rank

The "keep your keyword at 1–2% density" rule is one of SEO's most durable zombies. There is no density target the algorithm rewards.

Density is a 1990s heuristic from when engines literally counted term frequency. Modern retrieval uses TF-IDF-derived weighting and, increasingly, embedding-based semantic matching — both of which penalize, not reward, mechanical repetition past the point of natural use. Saturation triggers diminishing-to-negative returns well before any "ideal" percentage.

What correlates with ranking is semantic coverage: related entities, synonyms, the sub-questions a topic implies — what tools approximate as "information gain" over competing pages.

— Stop counting your target phrase; check whether you cover the co-occurring concepts competitors do
— One well-placed mention in the title and an H2 does more than fifteen forced repetitions

Nuance: a term appearing zero times when it's the core entity is still a miss. Presence matters; a precise percentage does not.

Method note: TF-IDF retrieval literature; embedding-model behavior on repeated tokens.
Confidence: high