When keyword density makes content unreadable
I’m all for optimised sites. It’s a competitive landscape and everybody wants their site to rank highly in search result pages.
Having a well executed strategy on search is important. But when you start treating search engine robots as your most important visitor you know you’ve got problems.
One of the common recommendations for SEO is keyword density. Pepper your copy with the keywords and phrases you want to rank highly on and you’ll perform better. Which is fine, so long as it doesn’t render the copy completely unreadable or redundant.
Take this copy from footwear e-tailer shoe-shop.com, on their page for Adidas trainers:
Men’s Adidas Trainers. Introducing Adidas - the world famous brand with an iconic sporting heritage. We stock a great selection of Men’s Adidas trainers, so if its men’s fashion trainers or men’s sports trainers you’re after, we have the Adidas style for you.
This paragraph, which appears at the top of the page provides no value whatsoever to me as a potential buyer. It basically says the thing three times over. The word Adidas is used four times, as are Trainers and Mens. Doesn’t take an SEO guru to figure out what they’re optimising for.
For me, this is tipping the balance too far down the SEO route. Writing content in an optimised world shouldn’t be one or the other. You should be able to provide interesting or valuable copy to the humans as well as the search bots. After all, it’s not the robots which are going to buy the Adidas Mens Trainers, are they?
Old school trainers photographed by Chris Westermeyer
By Dom Waghorn, Head of User Engagement at 
