Keyword stuffing in a nutshell
-
Keyword stuffing is the practice of excessively filling a web page with keywords to manipulate search engine rankings. It can be visible (in the content) or invisible (by hiding it in the HTML or making the color of the text and background the same).
-
If you create keyword-stuffed content, major search engines like Google and Bing will probably lower your rankings or remove you from search results.
-
Keyword-stuffed content often provides a poor user experience, leading to high bounce rates and decreased engagement.
-
Search engines now prioritize understanding context and user intent over keyword density. Writing naturally for human readers is more effective than stuffing keywords.
-
Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in the correct context. Cover topics comprehensively rather than repeating keywords.
-
Use secondary keywords, synonyms, and long-tail variations to provide context and improve SEO without stuffing.
-
Use keywords strategically throughout important page elements (title, meta description, headings, etc.) and maintain a natural keyword density (generally 2-5%).
-
Consider the overall page layout and user experience when optimizing. Where appropriate, include interactive elements to enhance user engagement and satisfaction.
When optimizing web pages for search engines like Google, it can be tempting to take the easy way out: using all kinds of manipulation tactics to quickly get higher rankings. Maybe you’re even thinking: “If search engines use keywords to match pages with search queries, then why not stuff as many of them as possible onto a single page to get it to rank for several highly searchable keywords?”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
While stuffing does go great with a Thanksgiving turkey, it doesn’t do the same magic for keywords. As a matter of fact, spammy SEO tactics like keyword stuffing do you way more harm than good.
So, get a pen and notepad ready because it’s time to learn. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about keyword stuffing in SEO.
What is keyword stuffing?
According to Google’s guidelines, the definition of keyword stuffing is, in simple terms, the practice of excessively filling a web page with keywords with the ultimate goal of gaming the search giant’s ranking system. There’s also a similar guideline on keyword stuffing provided by Bing.
Back in the day, this practice was actually a rather successful way of boosting a web page’s search visibility, but search engines eventually outgrew it and started issuing keyword stuffing penalties – but more on that later.
Keyword stuffing examples
These days, many people in content creation and SEO keep stuffing their pages with keywords and they don’t even realize it. As a result, they suffer unexpected consequences.
Below are some examples of SEO keyword stuffing to help you better understand what it is and how to tell if you’re doing it on your web pages.
Keyword stuffing can be broken down into two distinct groups: visible and invisible. Let’s take a closer look at each type.
Examples of visible keyword stuffing
If you’re unnaturally repeating a specific keyword or number multiple times out of context in a piece of content and your readers can see it, that’s visible keyword stuffing.
For example, let’s say a home appliance e-store is looking to get a web page quickly ranked high for the search term ‘best vacuum cleaner’. In this case, an example of keyword stuffing in the copy would be:
Looking for the best vacuum cleaner? You’ve come to the right place for the best vacuum cleaner. Our brand offers the best vacuum cleaner that you could want. Lightweight, yet powerful, this is the best vacuum cleaner for all your cleaning needs. Best vacuum cleaner.
As you can see, the term ‘best vacuum cleaner’ is used way too many times here. It’s even used out of context in some places, and in others it’s completely irrelevant to the main topic of the content. At the end of the day, no one will see this text and say ‘wow’.
Here’s another example of a web page that uses several closely-related keywords in its copy to get search engines to favor it in search. Now, although it isn’t as blatant as the example above, it’s still keyword stuffing.
Other examples of visible keyword stuffing include inserting text blocks that just repeat a keyword. There’s also link spamming, as shown in the screenshot below (which is, of course, just an example):
Link spamming is also known as spamdexing, and even though it may not be a direct keyword stuffing example, the idea behind it is the same. You’re trying to fill your content with various links, which is interpreted as keyword spamming by search engines and can lead to penalties.
Examples of invisible keyword stuffing
Some content creators are smart enough to know not to mess with their users’ page experience. So, instead of pushing keywords directly in front of their eyes, these creators might still create spammy, unreadable text, but simply hide it from the reader.
There are several ways to hide keywords from readers, but not from search engine crawlers. You could, for example, make the color of the text and background the same (as shown above), but web page text, no matter its color, style, or size, is still HTML. This means it will still be spotted by search engines when they crawl and index your web page.
You can also stuff the keyword in the web page’s HTML code, like in the comment, meta, and/or alt tag, but search bots will still find them.
The bottom line is this: when content creators practice keyword stuffing, they’re making a conscious decision to optimize their web page for search engines only and at the expense of their intended audience — people. And since search engines are designed to serve human readers, keyword stuffing tactics will be seen as manipulative. Search engines will likely penalize your web page in response.
Let’s focus on that last part in greater detail.
Why is keyword stuffing bad?
As a rule of thumb, stuffing your web pages with keywords definitely won’t help your search rankings; In fact, it can even harm your SERP standings. Keyword-stuffed content is simply unreadable and unhelpful to users, and search engines, naturally, favor pages that create a great experience for users.
Search engines state that keyword stuffing results in a negative user experience and can harm your site’s rankings.
As you can see, straight from the horse’s mouth, if you’re repeating the same keyword or number over and over on a page, there’s a good chance that Google and other search engines will penalize it by decreasing its rankings.
On top of that, besides being able to understand textual content, search engines also pay a great deal of attention to how searchers interact with web pages and their content.
For example, let’s say that somehow a newly-published keyword-stuffed page gets featured briefly at the top of the search results because of its use of visible black hat manipulation tactics. At the end of the day, people will leave it as soon as they see the mess inside. This will result in a high bounce rate, which will signal to search engines that the page isn’t giving users what they thought they’d get.
Of course, it wouldn’t be unfair to object and say that you’ve seen keyword-stuffed pages rank high on SERPs before, but don’t go running off to do it just yet. Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, clarified in a tweet:
You don't get penalized for making helpful updates to a page. Anyone can update their pages any time if they are doing that because the update is designed to help people. If you're removing stuff you did because you though "this was primarily to help my Google rankings," that's…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 31, 2023
As you can see, Sullivan explained how SEO keyword stuffing works:
He also provided an example of unhelpful repetition:
The point here is that search engines are more sophisticated. They don’t just count how often keywords appear on a page. Sullivan emphasized:
What you can draw from this discussion is that the use of keyword stuffing won’t actually hurt your web page that much, at least when it comes to SERP rankings. This is because search engines analyze a complex set of factors.
While you might occasionally see a keyword-stuffed web page ranking high in search, don’t assume that keyword stuffing helped it get there. It’s more likely that the page has achieved a high ranking despite being keyword-stuffed because it provides high value to users.
The idea behind keyword stuffing actually stems back to the days when you simply had to add keywords to your content to let search engines know what the text was about. But after multiple algorithm updates, including the release of the Hummingbird update, the search titan started understanding texts even better. Now it understands synonyms, typos, and what the user wanted to find when entering a search query, which is to say, the intent of the user.
Moreover, with the release of the BERT update and its subsequent MUM algorithm update, Google has refocused its attention on content created for human readers and not for search bots. This means that there is an almost zero percent chance that Google will go back to its old ways.
Content creators should forget about extensively using exact-match keywords and instead focus on producing naturally written text. So, as tempting as it is, don’t force keywords into your content. You’ll have way better luck optimizing it the way both search engines and people want you to, which leads us to the final point.
It’s also worth noting that in September 2023, Google rolled out a significant Helpful Content Update (HCU) that targeted SEO-first content. This update aimed to reward content that gives users a satisfying experience and stays up-to-date and helpful.
In March 2024, the helpful content system was integrated into Google’s core ranking systems. This means keeping content high in quality and user-focused is now a constant requirement for optimal search performance and user experience.
How to avoid keyword stuffing
At this point, we’ve settled on the fact that keyword stuffing won’t have the decisive say in your web page’s search rankings, but keyword optimization will. So, let’s once again see what advice Google has to offer: “Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.”
That means that you should use keywords whenever it helps users. The key is to ensure each keyword placement adds value and context for the reader.
Let’s move on to the steps you need to take to properly optimize a web page for a keyword.
1. Use secondary keywords, synonyms, and long-tail keywords
To avoid keyword stuffing, create high-quality content that engages your audience. Write for humans, not for search engines, and conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant keywords and phrases for your content.
Spread secondary keywords, synonyms, and long-tail variations throughout your content. These keyword types give search engines additional context and prove that your page covers the main topic. They also help users find your content more often. This is because people tend to search the web using a variety of related terms and phrases.
Moreover, long-tail keywords let search engines know that your content contains answers to relevant search queries. Google might even feature it in its “People also ask” section.
Also, using synonyms in your content demonstrates relevance to Google and can improve your search rankings. Using synonyms also confirms that you are writing content for people and not for machines.
This is even more effective when combined with a keyword clustering approach. This strategy involves grouping related keywords and creating one comprehensive page for each cluster. The principle is simple: 1 cluster = 1 page. This helps you cover topics thoroughly and rank for multiple related terms on a single, well-optimized page.
Сreating a strong SEO keyword list starts with identifying high-quality, top-performing keywords. SE Ranking’s Keyword Suggestion Tool will come in handy here. It provides a list of related long-tail keywords and queries for any topic, plus the metrics and SERP data needed to analyze them.
Also, instead of optimizing content for a single keyword or phrase, focus on optimizing for a topic comprehensively. When you cover all parts of a topic and various semantically related terms, search engines see your content as a comprehensive topic resource. It also shows that your content is valuable for readers interested in more than one aspect of the topic. It’s also helpful to use similar phrases to how people think and talk about subjects. This makes your writing sound more natural and covers more of what people want to know.
SE Ranking’s Content Marketing Platform can be a valuable tool for improving your content creation and optimization workflow. It features a powerful SEO Content Editor, which analyzes top-ranking content. You can then use this information to find better ways to optimize your content. The tool provides recommendations on which keywords to use and how many, helps structure your article, and analyzes the content’s readability, grammar, and spam.
This results in high-quality, optimized reader and search engine-friendly content.
2. Maintain a good keyword density
During content creation, try sprinkling the text with your target keyword, but try not to go overboard. Only insert the keyword where and when it feels natural. But still, you might be wondering how many keywords are too many in a single piece of content.
While there’s no strict rule on the appropriate number of times to use keywords in your content, try to check the keyword density and then keep within a safe range. Experts suggest that 2-5% is a safe range to stay within, but to rank higher in search results, you’ll find that the recommended keyword density varies depending on your niche and the level of competition in it. To find out what the recommended density is, research your top competitors and incorporate their keyword strategies into yours while keeping your content natural.
SE Ranking’s On-page SEO Checker enables users to optimize their own content’s keyword density. The tool provides a comprehensive analysis of your web page and identifies potential issues related to keyword density that may impact your page’s overall performance in search results. It provides recommendations on adjusting keyword usage throughout the page, helping you optimize it for the target keyword and avoid keyword stuffing.
3. Add the target keyword to page elements
To get a page to rank high for a specific keyword, optimize the page for that keyword instead of ‘stuffing’ it into your copy. The trick is using the keyword where it matters most for search engines while keeping the text natural and valuable to readers. These elements include the page title, title tag, meta description, beginning and ending of the text, subheadings, and image alt tags.
It’s also crucial to structure your content to provide more context for search engines. For example, use HTML heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to break up your content and make it more readable.
As opposed to keyword stuffing, when you optimize page elements, you’re strategically placing the target keyword in all the places that search engines use to understand the content’s topic.
And if the target keyword is present in both the body of the content and all metadata fields, this sends out a very strong and consistent signal to search engines that the main topic is covered in your content. This can increase the likelihood that the page will get ranked high for the right target search term in the SERPs.
Properly optimizing pages for keywords goes beyond inserting the keyword into various page elements. You may have to structure the entire page layout and content in a way that best satisfies user needs. Sometimes, this means thinking outside the “plain text” frame and adding interactive elements to your page.
For example, let’s consider “how to choose” guides. When creating one, it may be a good idea to consider an interactive questionnaire that asks visitors about their preferences, needs, and constraints related to the product or service they’re interested in. This helps users make informed decisions based on their specific situation, which can significantly improve their satisfaction and the overall usefulness of your page.
Now over to you
Unlike keyword-stuffed pages that simply repeat vaguely defined keywords over and over with the ultimate goal of cheating and gaming ranking systems, keyword-optimized pages provide search engines with clarity about the page’s content. It makes it clear which search term the page should be displayed in search for. This helps your pages achieve higher rankings, and generates traffic that actually comes back to your site.
Take your time to do proper keyword research and prioritize creating high-quality content for human readers. Gone are the days of filling a page with keywords and enjoying high rankings as soon as tomorrow. These days, your focus should be on giving people exactly what they want.By following the tips provided in this blog post, you’ll soon be producing keyword-optimized (not keyword-stuffed) content! But to get there a little quicker, be sure to give SE Ranking a free 14-day try. You’ll love our keyword research and on-page SEO checking tools!
