Keyword Density
In one line
Keyword density is the ratio of target-keyword occurrences to total words on a page — once a headline SEO signal, today only a minor secondary one.
Going deeper
Keyword density is a plain ratio — keyword count divided by total word count. In early-2000s SEO, hitting a target range was a core task, but as engines moved to semantic understanding the standalone signal lost almost all of its weight.
It's not completely useless. If the keyword never appears, the page's topic gets ambiguous, so density survives as a sanity check — does the term show up naturally and often enough. Stuffing it in to hit a percentage, on the other hand, is a clear negative signal these days.
In AI search, semantic consistency matters far more than density. LLMs reward pages where synonyms and related concepts blend naturally into the prose, not pages that hammer the same exact phrase over and over.
Related terms
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is the old-school habit of cramming a target keyword into a page far past what reads naturally — today a clear penalty signal, not a ranking trick.
SEOPrimary Keyword
The primary keyword is the single search term a page is built around — the one your title, H1 and meta description should all consistently point at.
SEOSecondary Keyword
Secondary keywords are the related terms that round out a page's meaning beyond the primary keyword — woven into subheadings, body copy and FAQs to widen its semantic reach.
SEOSemantic Search
Semantic search matches results by understanding the meaning and intent behind a query rather than matching exact keywords — the default mode of modern search engines and LLMs.
SEOThin Content
Thin content is content that adds little or no value for users — shallow, duplicated, or auto-generated — and it tends to get downgraded under Google's quality systems.
How does your brand show up in AI answers?
Villion measures how your brand appears across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, then automates the work that lifts citation rate and share of voice.
Get a free audit