In the old days of the internet, a common practice was to use every trick in the book to get your website ranked higher. Nowadays, some of those tricks go against the terms of service of search engines and might get you in trouble. One of the most controversial and misunderstood SEO practices is keyword stuffing. If you are wondering what is keyword stuffing and why it should be avoided, make sure to keep reading.
What is keyword stuffing?
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of overusing a specific search term, often called a keyword. The intent is to improve your SEO, but instead of taking a comprehensive and all-inclusive approach for boosting SEO, some people decide to take shortcuts. They employ what are called black hat practices – web design techniques that go against the terms of service of Google and other search engines in order to get better results in a shorter time.
Probably the most popular black hat practice is keyword stuffing, where you repeat (or stuff) as many instances of your keyword as possible on every page of your website in hopes of ranking higher. Keyword research and optimization are standard, but some people take that to the extreme and over-optimize their pages. This often takes the form of repeating the chosen keywords again and again, seemingly out of context, or even using keywords when they are not relevant to the text.
Why keyword stuffing should be avoided
First of all, users genuinely dislike visiting website pages that have been designed with the sole purpose of scoring search engine hits. Visiting pages that have been stuffed with keywords results in an awful user experience, and it will lead to an increased bounce rate. Simply put, users will leave your website in the blink of an eye. Even if you somehow managed to fool the search engine, you could still suffer from lower sales as customers go elsewhere. If users are leaving your website quickly upon arrival, this not only causes you to lose business but also sends a message to the search engines. They will flag your website since it isn’t giving users what they expected to find there. Then you’ll end up getting reduced traffic.
On the other hand, there is a type of keyword stuffing that isn’t visible to the audience. The keywords are hidden using a variety of tricks, like coloring the text the same as the background or placing the keywords in the page code or tags. Although users might not be able to see your overuse of keywords, search engines will still be able to tell, which can lead to your website getting penalized by Google.
Whichever way you cut it, keyword stuffing inevitably turns out to be bad for your website. It will ultimately cause you to lose users and experience reduced website traffic from search engines.
Dealing with negative consequences from keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing might cause you to rank high on SERPs and bring in some short-term results. However, your website will almost certainly suffer negative consequences in the long run. You will get blacklisted by search engines, causing you to lose rank or get entirely omitted from search results. Recovering can be very difficult and time-consuming, so you should do your best to protect your website from negative SEO.
Google’s new BERT update has improved the algorithm, and it now requires fewer human penalty reviews and manual actions. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t get a manual penalty; it’s just that the algorithm has gotten far better at recognizing black hat practices and anything that goes against the user experience.
- If you receive a manual action penalty, you will have a limited time to respond and file a reconsideration request. You will obviously need to correct the issues that caused the penalty, but even then – there is a period of up to 30 days before your request will be accepted.
- On the other hand, algorithmic penalties take much longer to recover from, and the negative consequences can last for months. There have even been those who claimed that their websites were penalized for a few years.
The underlying principle you should learn from this is that keyword stuffing is never worth it. You should carefully manage your online reputation and occasionally run an SEO and content audit to be on the safe side.
How much keyword placement is just right?
You should always aim to create useful content dense with information users will actually appreciate. Use keywords when appropriate, and make your text sound natural and easy to read. Write for your users, not for Google’s algorithm. Although there is no exact number of keywords you need to use, there are still SEO trends and guidelines you can follow:
- Write longer content. This will naturally give you more opportunities to use your chosen keyword. Avoid writing articles with fewer than 300 words.
- Keyword density below 2% is considered good. Try not to go overboard when using your keyword, but still sprinkle it throughout the text.
- Use synonyms and secondary keywords. You can also use long-tail keywords as variations of your primary terms to further specify what your article is about.
Branded or non-branded keywords
When it comes to using keywords correctly, another approach you can take is to alternate in use between branded and non-branded keywords. This will give you a wider variety of keyword options and will cause you to achieve more hits in searches. However, it’s imperative to choose the right type for your marketing campaigns. Branded keywords help you stand out from the competition and achieve more on-site conversions, while non-branded keywords are better for overall visibility.
The bottom line
Now that we have gone over what is keyword stuffing and why it should be avoided, you should have a good idea of how to properly optimize your content to improve your SEO. Remember that it always comes down to giving more value to the user. If you use that as a guiding principle, it should be easy to avoid mistakes and earn the favor of both users and search engine algorithms.
