How to Avoid Keyword Stuffing and Boost Your SEO Efficiency

For a while in the past, keyword stuffing has been the most popular technique website owners used to increase organic reach and conversion rates. However, search engines are much more sophisticated now and don't fraternize this method anymore.

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What is keyword stuffing precisely, and how do you avoid it in your content? This post will cover the major basics you should know about it and how to check your website for overstuffed content.

What is keyword stuffing in SEO?

Keyword stuffing is the practice of using the same keywords or phrases in your web page's meta tags, visual content, or backlink anchor texts. The primary purpose of keyword spamming is to unfairly manipulate the rankings of a target page in search results, which used to be a popular method years ago.

The main types of keyword stuffing

There are several major types of keyword stuffing in SEO:

• Visible keyword stuffing. This means overusing keywords within the visible content on a given page, which makes the text seem unnatural and / or repetitive.
• Meta tag keyword stuffing. This method involves integrating keywords into web pages' meta tags (title and meta description).
• Anchor text stuffing. This practice applies using the exact same keywords as the anchor text for the added backlinks.
• Hidden keyword stuffing. This one involves hiding keywords in the web page's HTML code, thus making them only visible to search engines.

Common examples of keyword stuffing

The best keyword stuffing example would be imagining yourself as a perfume store owner who's trying to optimize a dedicated product page.

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An overly stuffed copy featuring the keyphrase "perfume store" would look like: "Our perfume store offers the widest selection of perfume samples. Visit our perfume store to explore more. You'll find everything you need and more in our online perfume store.”

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Such cases were widespread before Google changed the game for keyword optimization and unfair SEO manipulations.

How Google treats keyword stuffing

In February 2011, Google introduced a special algorithm update to lower the search rankings of poor-quality websites and replace them with high-quality, user-friendly websites. As a result, websites that abused keyword optimization would soon go lower in search results, becoming less and less visible to users.

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This way, Google helps well-optimized websites rank higher, get better conversion rates, and streamline their online business.

Why is keyword stuffing harmful to SEO efficiency?

‍Let's take a quick look at the main threats keyword or cluster stuffing can lead to:

• Lower quality of user experience. Keyword spam lowers content readability, thus making most of your visitors bounce off.
• Poor content quality. Overstuffing with keywords distracts from the important information placed on your web pages, diminishing its overall value.
• Potential search engine penalties. Google can impose penalties or remove your website from its index if it detects keyword stuffing.
• Slower long-term SEO progress. Keyword stuffing and irrelevant keywords may slow down long-term SEO improvements by reducing your website's credibility and search engine rankings.
• Lower conversion. Overused keywords seem unauthentic, thus reducing the probability of user conversions.

Can you consider keyword stuffing a ranking factor?

SEO keyword stuffing used to help improve website rankings. However, now it's considered more of a manipulative tactic that not only lowers your website's position in the search results but also aggravates the UX.

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You can even suffer severe penalties imposed for keyword stuffing, eventually drastically dropping your site's organic search rankings. Worst-case scenario, Google may simply remove your website from its index. That said, adding high-quality, user-friendly content that naturally implements relevant, organic keyword clusters must be the only option.

Tips to help you avoid keyword stuffing

It can sometimes slip your eye that some of your pages contain too many repetitive keywords. However, it's not incurable — below, you'll see the list of the main tips to help you avoid this problem with your on-page copy and protect your website from potential penalties.

Write for humans and not just search engines

The first thing to remember while adding keywords to your content is that humans read your copy, too. Since Google and other search engines can now understand the context and semantic meaning of your texts, it's no longer necessary to add the same keyword in every sentence.

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Well-groomed content that provides value to your website visitors is now a top priority for client-oriented businesses. You should only use the primary keyword where it makes sense, and you'll see how significantly user experience, engagement, and conversion rates will improve.

Utilize LSI keywords

Latent semantic indexing (or LSI) keywords are the ones related to your primary keyword, and they help Google and other search engines understand the context and relevance of your content correctly. LSI keywords allow you to do so without the need to add the primary keyword once again.

Optimize meta tags smartly

Meta tags, such as your page title and meta description, can also be beneficial to those using keyword stuffing. To find a perfect balance, you should add a primary keyword in your title tag and meta description, but not too much — one per meta tag is just fine. Keep in mind that you're showing this content to search engines and users, so better make sure to implement the keyword organically in every meta tag.‍

Maintain proper keyword density

Keyword density is the correlation between the times a keyword appears on a page and the total number of words. Most SEO experts recommend that this figure be at most 1-2 % (approx. 1-2 keywords per 100 words), although this percentage may differ from case to case.

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This way, you provide users with naturally-sounding, readable content and, at the same time, send signals to search engines about the topics you cover on your web page.

Regularly review and audit your content

Regular website checkups help you detect any signs of keyword spamming and adequately analyze your keyword usage patterns to make sure you're using just enough of them. Moreover, site audits can help you find outdated content and refresh it, thus improving SERP rankings and creating a more plausible experience for users.

Run comprehensive website audits with Netpeak Spider

As we've mentioned above, website audits and checkups are extremely helpful in detecting critical issues with your website, such as keyword spam. Utilizing crawling tools in your SEO routine is crucial for your website's permanent high performance, and Netpeak Spider might be just your perfect option for that.

This multifunctional web crawler can find over 100 known SEO-related issues, including those with your keywords. It's elementary to work with, and you can run an audit for any number of pages in just a few quick steps:

• Add the list of URLs you need to analyze or paste it from a clipboard into the tool's search bar;
• On the right sidebar, select all the required research metrics;
• Click "Start" to launch the crawling process.

Here's more to that. You can enrich your website audit with in-depth data and other useful features Netpeak Spider provides:

Data filters and segmentation

Netpeak Spider reflects research data segment by segment, so you can track only the parameters you need. Break the data into categories or segments on a dashboard, set custom filters, or change the data overview for more convenience.

Internal PageRank calculator

The internal PageRank calculator lets you track your pages' internal linking. Check out the link weight distribution of any target page and see which ones burn incoming link equity and which don't get any of it at all.

Integrations with Google Analytics and Search Console

Netpeak Spider integrates Google Analytics and Search Console data to enrich your website analysis. You can access essential insights on traffic, your pages' goals, conversion rates, and other eCommerce parameters from different trusted sources at once — all stored in one convenient app.

Bottom line

SEO keyword stuffing used to be a popular method of making your page rank higher in search results — however, thanks to Google's advancement, it's no longer viable to do so. Abusing the search engine algorithms by adding too many keywords in a copy isn't only harmful to your organic reach and position in search results — your visitors' experience and credibility also might be compromised.

However, thanks to modern-day algorithms, innovative tools, and techniques, avoiding keyword stuffing and improving your ranking in search results is easy. Try Netpeak Spider and follow the tips we've listed in this post to start improving your SEO strategy and online performance right away!