You’ve probably heard the term “keyword density.” If you’re into SEO, you know you want to pick a term that you want to rank high for in the engines, and then you want to use that term all over your site: in header tags, in the page title, in bold, and italics. , in links, in the anchor text of the links that come to your site.

But here’s a tip: don’t overdo it. And this is how you know if you’re overdoing it: You sound like an idiot.

Consider the “read it out loud” test. Read your page out loud and ask yourself if you would be embarrassed to read it to someone. Or give it to a friend and ask them to read it. If they can’t figure out what term you’re optimizing for, you’re good to go.

But you want a good density, right? So here’s what you do: add a few mentions of your keyword and read it out loud. If it doesn’t sound stupid, add more and do it again. Once it starts to sound ridiculous, back off a bit.

Here’s why you do this:

1. If a human reads your site, you don’t want it to be reported as spam and banned from Google.

2. If your site sounds dumb, visitors will know it’s spam and leave. They will simply press the back button.

Remember – you are trying to get search engines to rank you, but then you need PEOPLE to come to your site. Real people, alive, with brains. If their copy looks spammy, they’ll know it… and all your optimization will have been for nothing.