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How to optimise your content for a target keyword
Executive overview
Keyword stuffing is obsolete. Matching searcher intent does 80% of on-page optimisation automatically, because relevant content naturally contains the right words and phrases.
Place your target keyword (or its core words) in the URL, title, headline, and body. That accounts for another ~10%.
The foundation of search success is authoritative content, not keyword engineering.
Why keyword frequency doesn't drive rankings
- 75% of pages ranking in Google's top 10 contain zero mentions of the query they rank for
- Google uses ranking signals beyond keyword counts to identify the most relevant page
- Synonyms and closely related phrases satisfy Google's understanding of a query
- Forcing exact-match keywords more than competitors was useful a decade ago — it isn't now
Where to use your keyword
- URL
- Title tag
- Headline (H1)
- Body content (at least once)
- Synonyms and related terms are acceptable substitutes — Google allows flexibility
The final 10%: advanced on-page SEO
- Concepts like TF-IDF, semantic distance, co-occurrence, and entity salience can refine rankings further
- These tactics are technical and better suited to professional SEOs
- For most creators, time is better spent improving content quality than chasing algorithmic optimisation
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