keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is when you use keywords with excessive frequency on a web page to improve the page’s ranking for that keyword.

Definition

Keyword stuffing describes a, from Google’s point of view at least, illegal measure in search engine optimization (SEO). Thereby one repeats search terms in the meta data, in textual content or as a Anchor texts very often in order to artificially increase the relevance of the article (for the corresponding keyword). Because this increases the keyword density considerably, search engines evaluate it as a spam measure, which normally results in a devaluation of the corresponding page. In addition to a lower ranking or a Google Penalty, this can mean exclusion from the index in the worst case.

Keyword stuffing worked until about the early 2000s.

In this measure, it was common to position keywords as “hidden text” on the page – in white color on a white background. While users couldn’t see them, they were visible to crawlers. Meanwhile, keyword stuffing counts as black hat SEO and is therefore no longer promising and can even lead to rnking losses!

What Google thinks of keyword stuffing….

… distance. The Google Webmaster Guidelines contain various criteria to make the quality of pages more measurable. This includes, among other things, references to the spam guidelines, which essentially also refer to keyword stuffing. The guidelines clearly discourage the overuse of a term, especially if it causes the website to lose its added value.

What you can do against keyword stuffing

For creating website content, you can now use tools to check WDF*IDF values as well as other quality factors for content detection and evaluation. So you can see the WDF*IDF value, remove keywords or content if necessary to get a proper positive ranking. However, make sure that the crawlers also read keywords in meta tags, headings, image descriptions and alt tags.

Also check if you can include more meaningful and natural content. See how many times the keyword is present and if you can usefully include other keywords and terms in their content.

If you enrich your page with bulleted lists, infographics and further links, this offers the visitor real added value and picks up on their need for information. As an alternative, hollistic pages on suitable topics can be used, which already offer more opportunity to place keywords due to their size. But these websites must also be oriented towards the user’s need for information.

What are SEO alternatives to keyword stuffing?

If you want to rank well with your site for a certain keyword, you should pay attention to a natural occurrence of the keywords in the texts. It is perfectly normal and also beneficial to use a certain keyword more often in the title, in alt attributes, on the home page or in product descriptions. Still, don’t overdo it – as long as the text is “natural”, the keyword doesn’t interfere with the reading flow, there’s no question of keyword stuffing.

Conclusion

Keyword stuffing is now considered an illicit SEO tactic that Google and co. punish with a lower ranking. With a focus on relevant content and good content, you offer your readers real added value and are on the safe side when it comes to search engine optimization.