The dangers of keyword stuffing

Back in the early days of SEO, keyword stuffing was considered the best practice for businesses who wanted their websites to dominate the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Nowadays, though, search engines like Google favour well-written, relevant content that contributes to a positive user experience over content cluttered with keywords and links.

Let’s face it, if you stumble upon a website with poorly written and repetitive content, you’re not very likely to stay and read on, let alone explore the rest of the site.

But why is keyword stuffing so dangerous?

Let’s dive into the details…

What exactly is keyword stuffing?

‘Looking for a digital marketing agency? Our digital marketing agency offers top-notch services. As a leading digital marketing agency, we ensure your business thrives with our digital marketing agency solutions. Choose our digital marketing agency for all your digital marketing needs. Contact the experts at our digital marketing agency today!’

This is just one example of keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing in SEO is a spammy and inefficient tactic that involves forcing keywords into content – be it web pages, blogs or FAQs – unnaturally, with the aim of ranking higher on SERPs.

Repeating keywords throughout your content is only natural, and it won’t harm your SEO rankings. However, the problem comes when certain words and phrases are placed too close together and used excessively, like in the example above.

Why do websites use this tactic?

Websites use this tactic as an ill-judged effort to earn higher SEO rankings, and in the early days, it could absolutely help achieve this.

This is because Google’s (very flawed, if you ask us!) algorithm treated pages with keywords, and more repetitions of keywords, as more relevant. And they also favoured sites with keyword-rich backlinks.

In recent algorithm updates, though, Google has really cracked down on keyword stuffing, penalising sites that use this tactic – pushing them further down the ranks or even removing websites altogether. Yikes.

How can keyword stuffing affect SEO?

Using this tactic in your website content can affect your SEO efforts in many different ways:

1. Keyword stuffing leads to poor-quality content

Keyword stuffing is a surefire way to create good-for-nothing content, and not only does it impact the rankings of individual pages on your site, but it can also harm your website as a whole.

Google rewards high-quality, content, so if you’re still stuck on stuffing, focus on upping your content game to see an improvement in your rankings.

2. It drives visitors away from your site

As we mentioned earlier, keyword stuffing discourages visitors who click on your content from reading and exploring your site further – leading to higher bounce rates.

Reading the same few words and phrases over and over can be incredibly distracting for users, and they’ll easily be able to pick up on the fact that there’s no real value or quality to the copy on your site.   

3. Google penalises keyword stuffing

Google prides itself on providing useful, quality search results to its users, so it won’t want to push something that looks like spam.

Even if you use snide keyword stuffing tactics – like making the keywords’ text the same colour as the webpage’s background, or placing keywords into the website’s code – Google can recognise this and demote your site. Ultimately leading to you missing out on new leads, as searchers won’t be able to find you.

What can I do to avoid keyword stuffing?

From conducting thorough keyword research to only focusing on a handful of keywords per page, there are plenty of things you can do to steer clear of keyword stuffing.

Researching your target market and what’s popular, as well as analysing keyword difficulty are all vital parts of keyword research. Once you’ve got your list together, pick one main keyword to target on each page of your website, and add one to five secondary keywords – dispersing these evenly through your content.

A good way to do this is by extending your word count as much as Google will allow – seeing as they favour certain content lengths over others.

By expanding your body of text, you’ll be able to include your keywords more naturally, rather than pumping them into every other sentence.

Need more expert help?

Whether you need help conducting keyword research and optimising your site, or a little guidance when it comes to writing quality content for SEO, we’ve got you covered here at Paramount Digital.

Our expert in-house SEO and content teams have decades of combined experience, and would be more than happy to help you achieve the best results for your business.

To discuss your SEO or content strategy in further detail, or for a FREE digital marketing audit, give us a call today on 01744 74 74 74 or email us at marketing@paramountdigital.co.uk and we’ll be in touch shortly!