What Is Keyword Stuffing And Why You Should Care?

Visibility is one of the most vital components of digital marketing. We all know that the best way to ensure that our blogs and websites get ranked on Google is by creating an SEO strategy.

SEO is all about incorporating keywords and phrases into your text so that your web pages rank on SERPs and are easily found by users. Developing a solid SEO strategy is difficult. And it can be rather tempting to fit in as many keywords as possible. Because the more keywords you add, the better your chances of earning a good search ranking? Unfortunately SEO doesn’t work that way and you can get penalized by search engines for “keyword stuffing.”

Examples of keyword stuffing, which is visible, include:

• Needlessly repeating words or phrases,
• Inserting words which are out of context,
• Including blocks of the same keyword, and
• Making use of keywords which are not relevant to the topic of the page.

An example of keyword stuffing would be a page which is attempting to rank for the phrase “best laptop bag” and makes use of the following copy:

“If you’re searching for the best laptop bag, look no further than us. Our brand provides you with the best laptop bag that you could desire for business or pleasure. With padding in our liners, as well as a special pocket for your charger, this is the best laptop bag for travel or, alternatively, school.”

In this example, the copy goes over the top with the use of the keyword ‘best laptop bag’. The term is used a couple of times, in a brief amount of text. Thus, this violates the suggested number of times to match SEO best practices for keyword density.

What Exactly Is Keyword Stuffing?

We already know that keywords refer to search terms people use when carrying out an online search. Search engines use the keywords in your content to connect users with the content that will answer their search query. So when someone searches for a keyword used in your content, your website will appear in their search results.

Keyword stuffing refers to the process of including a vast number of keywords in your content in an attempt to artificially boost the search ranking of a website. When keywords are used this way they often appear unnatural in context of the website’s content.

Why Keyword Stuffing Is A Big Deal

Back in the day keyword stuffing was an easy way to trick search engines into your website had the best content to match a specific search query. They more keywords you added the better you website ranked.

These days search engines are much smarter and the rules of acceptable SEO practices have changed. SEO professionals had to adapt to Google’s Panda and Penguin updates. You can’t just stuff keywords onto a web page and expect to be ranked by a search engine.

Keyword stuffing has been flagged as a black-hat SEO technique which does not follow the rules set out by search engines. And using these tactics will result in your website disappearing from the SERPs entirely.

Best Ways To Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Keywords are essential for proper SEO and content marketing. They are valuable on a creative level because they help to guide and structure your content. So how do you use the right amount of keywords in your content and still avoid keyword stuffing. It may seem like quite the dilemma. Luckily there is a way to find the right balance. An SEO course can teach you the right way to structure your content for search engines. But for now, here are a few tip to help you avoid keyword stuffing.

• Remember Your Audience

It’s important to remember that you’re writing for real people, not robot crawlers. While it’s tempting to craft content for search algorithms you need to avoid it entirely. If the content you create is valuable, fun and engaging everything else will fall into place. Remember to write naturally so that your content makes sense to human readers first.

• Concentrate On Placement

Identify the best spots to place keywords within your content. Maximum SEO value can be earned by placing keywords in your headings, title tags, descriptions, and the first paragraph of your text content. Once you have ticked off those boxes you can focus on natural writing and good content.

• Use Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are search phrases that contain three words or more. They’re an excellent way to incorporate important search terms in your content, while avoiding any hint of keyword stuffing. By using long tail phrases your content will read naturally and still hit all your SEO targets.

• Try Synonyms

Search engines are really smart and they usually know what someone means even if they don’t use the exact search terms every time. As such, it’s perfectly all right to add a few synonyms into your content. For example: If you want to rank for the word “books” it’s also okay to use a synonym like “novels”. The search engines will know what you mean; you won’t lose any SEO points for the change-up. And most importantly you won’t get flagged for keyword stuffing.

Formula to work out keyword density

Keyword density may be calculated as a specific figure, if you need to. In order to determine the keyword density of a particular webpage, just divide the number of times that a given keyword is mentioned by the total number of words on the page. The figure that you get is the keyword density of that page.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Are you keen to learn more about SEO? If you are, then you should really look at doing our SEO and Web Analytics Course. Follow this link for more information.