Keyword Stuffing – How to Protect Your Website SEO

Ranking High in the search rankings is the centre of the whole of the SEO. When your site ranks higher, you will have more traffic, which increases the chances of conversions.

There are a thousand tactics that are used to achieve that. But we all know one of the biggest things for a content marketer to look up to is the keywords in the content.

Using specific keywords or phrases that we think our potential customers would use while searching for the product is the evergreen tactic.

Now then, we can simply add those words a lot of time to rank higher right? No.

Using the same keyword again and again in the content gives rise to keyword stuffing (which is a bad thing). Now what exactly it is? And why does it cause problems? We’ll talk about it all further in the article, we’ll discuss why is it even a problem. And how you can ignore that to make your content clean and pure.

Let’s Get Moving Fellas!

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What is Keyword Stuffing?

When you use the same keyword or phrase repetitively in your content, that is called keyword stuffing. It is easy to notice in the content, Google believes it’s spam and it also puts readers off.

Keyword Stuffing is divided into two types:

1. Visible

Needless repetition of words (keywords) and phrases throughout the content. For instance, if you are advertising the best dating app, you would have to be limited to the use of words like ‘dating’ and ‘best’.

Use of words or phrases (that have a high volume audience) which are not related to your topic (or product/ service).

Attaching a list of phone numbers without any elemental value.

Section of text where a list of cities and states are written that a webpage is willing to rank for.

Now, not all stuffing is directly visible. If you stuff keywords in your content management systems and thought you would get away with it, well No. Invisible stuffing is also highlighted by the search engines.

2. Invisible

Putting the words with a white font on a white background, thinking that users won’t be able to seem it. Well, crawlers will. And that would be counted on keyword stuffing by the search engine.

Use the same words or phrases over and over in your alt text.

Adding the words repetitively in the code of the webpage.

Repeating the words in the meta and comment tags.

As we saw, there are a number of situations where a website will be alleged of keyword stuffing. But does that even cause any harm?

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What Harms Can Keyword Stuffing Cause?

There was a time when keyword stuffing was acceptable and even considered a common tactic. But with time, Google has updated its algorithm and released various new guidelines. Now it can cause a lot of problems, such as:

User experience

One of the most important things nowadays is providing a positive experience to readers or customers. But when you start stuffing the webpage, you’re focusing more on ranking than readers.

Penalties

Search engines hate keyword stuffing now. So, if your website is found guilty of stuffing the webpages, those webpages can face penalties or in some cases, the whole website can face punishment for that. In worst cases, Google removes your website from the SERPs entirely as a punishment.

Audience Loss

If your audience came to your website to get some important information or to buy a product /service and they see the content is repeating words for better ranking and isn’t providing them with the value, they would simply vote against your site and would look for the information somewhere else.

Brand Damage

If you post content often with repetitive keywords, the brand image will have to face the consequences of that. If users begin to remember that content on your site is usually stuffed and ain’t providing sufficient value, they would lose confidence and trust in you. Which will lead to the sudden downfall of your brand image.

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The Right Thing To Do

So now that we know keyword stuffing ain’t worth it and it should be ignored at any cost. What will be its substitute? because ranking higher is still the need.

Relevancy

The primary thing to start from is to identify the words and phrases that are relevant to your organization. You can look up the keyword finders or simply check your competition companies and notice what words are they using to promote their blog/product/service.

Learn From Others

We all want to show up on the first page of search results, right! Most of the audience click on the first three results they saw on top.

What you can learn from them is, make a list of all the keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your organization and use them and their synonyms appropriately.

Engagement Matters More

Google does look up to the keywords you use for rankings. But that’s not the centre of the complete process, engagement metrics do matter in pulling you up in the rankings. To implement SEO properly and create content that engages readers.

Variation

Different pages provide different data and different users search for different things. Don’t put the same keyword throughout your website pages in order to rank well. Use basic language and differentiate the purpose/information of each webpage on your website to stay appropriate.

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To Conclude

No one wants their website to get penalized just because of poor SEO practice. Keep your readers at the centre of the content and write around them, to keep them engaged, which will build a trustworthy brand image of your website/company to help you in the long run.

Do not fall for poor practices just to witness fast results. Be patient with the process, don’t run to find a quick fix. As they would cause more issues than help.

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Thank you for reading along, it meant a lot to us.

I hope you have found all the answers you were looking for, if not! Then the comment box is wide open for you or you can mail ([email protected]) us, we promise you to reply as fast as possible.