Keyword density measures how often a target keyword or phrase appears in your content relative to total words, expressed as a percentage. Calculate it by dividing keyword occurrences by total words, then multiplying by 100. A page with 8 instances of "Ottawa web design" in 800 words has 1% density. This metric dominated SEO discussions from roughly 2005–2012, when search engines were easier to game with repetition. Content creators obsessed over hitting 2–3% density or specific ratios. Google's algorithm updates, particularly Panda in 2011 and subsequent natural language processing improvements, made crude density targeting obsolete and often counterproductive. No magic density number exists today. Modern search engines evaluate semantic relevance, context, entity relationships, and user intent rather than raw keyword counting. A well-written 1,200-word article might naturally hit 0.5–2% for its primary keyword without forced repetition. Exceeding 3–4% typically signals keyword stuffing, which triggers ranking penalties. What matters more than density: - Using the target keyword in strategic locations like title tags, H1, first 100 words, and a few subheadings - Including related terms and synonyms that demonstrate topic depth - Writing for human readers first, search engines second - Matching search intent with content format and comprehensiveness At Ottawa SEO, we stopped tracking density as a deliberate metric around 2013. When auditing content, we check whether the main keyword appears enough times that the page's topic is unmistakable to both readers and crawlers, usually 3–8 mentions for articles under 1,000 words. We focus significantly more effort on semantic clusters, internal linking architecture, and ensuring content actually answers what searchers want. If you find yourself calculating exact percentages or forcing keywords into unnatural positions to hit a target ratio, you're optimizing for an outdated playbook that modern algorithms actively work against.