A client once sent me a spreadsheet with a column titled "keyword density %." He had been filling it in every week for eleven months. His rankings had not moved a single position in that entire time.
That spreadsheet is the clearest picture of outdated advice I have ever been handed. SEO — search engine optimization, the work of getting your business to show up when someone searches for what you sell — stopped being a counting exercise a long time ago. The advice just never caught up.
So business owners are still sprinkling "emergency plumber Chicago" through their paragraphs like salt, waiting for a page-one placement that is never coming.
Here is what actually moved the needle for a client of mine this spring, and what I would have you do instead.
Keyword Density Was Never a Setting Google Had
Keyword density is the percentage of words on a page that match the phrase you want to rank for. Write "roof repair Austin" nine times in a 900-word page and you have roughly a 1% density.
Around 2005, that number genuinely mattered. Search engines counted words, so stuffing more of them in worked.
It has not worked in years. Google's systems now work out what a page is about from context — roughly the way a person skimming it would.
Repeating "roof repair Austin" nine more times does not make the page more about roof repair. It just makes it harder to read, and that is measurable too.
I want to be blunt, because this costs people real money: if someone hands you a monthly report with a keyword density target in it, they are selling you 2005.
The Flooring Contractor Who Was Doing Everything "Right"
In March, a flooring company in Charlotte, North Carolina hired me. Two crews, hardwood and luxury vinyl, fifteen years in business. Genuinely excellent at the actual work.
His website was stuffed. Every service page repeated "flooring installation Charlotte" so many times it read like a ransom note. He had been paying $400 a month for two years to a company that sent him density reports and little else.
He was ranking eleventh for his main search term. Eleventh may as well be nowhere — almost nobody scrolls to the second page.
I did not touch his keyword counts for the first month. I looked at three things that have nothing to do with how often a phrase appears on a page.
The Three Things That Actually Moved His SEO Rankings
Review velocity, not review count. He had 78 reviews, which sounds healthy. But only six had arrived in the previous twelve months. His nearest competitor had 41 reviews total — and 19 of them from the last six months.
Google reads recency as evidence that a business is active right now. A wall of five-year-old praise does not say that. We started asking every customer for a review by text the same day the crew finished, while they were still standing on a floor they loved.
Listing consistency. In the trade this is called NAP — your business name, address, and phone number, exactly as they appear everywhere online.
He had three different phone numbers floating around the internet: an old cell, a tracking number the previous agency had set up, and his current office line. His address appeared as both "Ste 4" and "Suite 4."
Google cross-checks these against each other. Conflicting information means lower confidence, and lower confidence means lower placement. We corrected 31 listings over three weeks.
Service page depth. He had one page covering "flooring installation." His competitors had separate pages for hardwood refinishing, luxury vinyl plank, stair treads, and subfloor repair.
Depth is not length. It is coverage. One long page trying to be about four things is beaten by four honest pages that each answer the questions a homeowner actually asks.
| What I changed | How long it took | What it cost him | What it produced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asked every customer for a review the same day | 10 minutes per job | $0 | 23 new reviews in 14 weeks |
| Corrected his name, address and phone across 31 listings | 3 weeks | About $290 in listing fees | Conflicting-information problem gone |
| Built 4 real service pages instead of 1 catch-all | 5 weeks | Included in the project | Ranked for 4 search terms instead of 1 |
| Rewrote the stuffed pages to read like English | 1 week | Included in the project | Small lift, and no drop |
Notice which line in that table cost nothing and produced the most.
If your rankings have been flat for a year while someone reports on your keyword percentages, let us talk about what is actually holding you back. I will tell you honestly if the problem is your site or something else.
How to Check Your Own Site This Week
None of this needs a specialist. You can do all five of these yourself in under an hour.
What I Would Stop Doing Today
I try not to give advice without a recommendation attached, so here is mine, in order.
If you only do one thing from this entire article, make it review velocity. It is free, it takes ten minutes per job, and it is the fastest-moving signal I have available on a local account. Everything on my SEO services page is built around that idea — earn the signals first, polish the writing second.
And if you are running paid campaigns while your listings are still inconsistent, you are paying to send traffic to a business Google is not sure exists. Fix the foundation before you scale the Google Ads spend. My process page walks through the order I do this in.
The Bottom Line
Google stopped counting your keywords years ago, but plenty of people are still billing you as though it does. The SEO work that moves local rankings now is unglamorous: recent reviews, consistent business details, and a real page for each thing you sell.
Do those three properly and you will outrank a competitor with a better-optimized page and an older reputation.
If you want someone to look at your site and tell you which of the three is costing you the most, send me a message and I will take a look. If you would rather read first, my frequently asked questions cover the pricing and timelines most people ask about before they get in touch.