"Aim for 2% keyword density."

"Aim for 2% keyword density."

That number is folklore.

A content team A/B-tested it honestly. They took 48 ranking pages and pushed each toward a clean 2.0% density for the target term — adding exact-match mentions where copy felt natural. A matched control group of 48 was left alone. Sixty days later: the 2% group lost an average of 1.6 positions; the control gained 0.4.

Why? Forcing the term in 14 extra times made intros read like a parody of SEO copy. Two pages tripped into the "this reads spammy" bucket and slid past page two.

There is no density target in any Google document, ever. The pages that gained shared synonyms and entities, not a magic ratio. Write for a reader who'd notice repetition. (Your reader notices. The algorithm noticed too.)