Keyword density—the percentage of times your target keyword appears compared to total word count—should land between 0.5% and 2% for most pages. A 1,000-word article might include your primary keyword 5–20 times. That said, chasing an exact percentage misses the point of how Google evaluates content in 2025. Search engines now use semantic analysis and entity recognition. They understand synonyms, related concepts, and topical clusters. If you're ranking for "Ottawa web design," Google also expects to see "website development," "UI/UX," "responsive design," and related entities naturally woven throughout. Mechanical keyword stuffing at 5% density will trigger over-optimization penalties and make your content unreadable. Instead of counting keyword occurrences, prioritize these placements: - Title tag and H1 (primary keyword once each) - First 100 words of body content - One H2 or H3 subheading - Naturally in the conclusion - Image alt text where genuinely descriptive At Ottawa SEO, we write for the user first, then scan for keyword presence. If a 400-word page mentions the target keyword twice (0.5%), but covers the topic comprehensively with semantic variations and answers the search intent, it will outrank a thin 300-word page that repeats the keyword 15 times (5%). The real risk is under-optimization—forgetting to include your target keyword at all, especially in critical elements like the title. But once you've hit those key placements, additional mentions should happen only when they serve the reader. If you're rewriting sentences just to insert the keyword again, you've gone too far. Modern on-page SEO is about topical authority, not keyword math. Use your primary keyword enough that Google knows what the page targets, then build depth with related terms, LSI keywords, and comprehensive coverage of the subject. That approach scales across our 500+ domain portfolio far better than obsessing over density percentages.