The perils of keyword stuffing and why it should be avoided

Here is an explained overview of why keyword stuffing should be avoided. Optimizing web pages to ace the game of search engines which includes Google is an essential part to get traction on the website, but there needs to be a concerted tactic that needs to be put into place.

One of the first thoughts which might cross your mind is the fact that if keywords play an essential role why not stuff the entire article on a single page with all the relevant and searchable keywords. This is what should be avoided at all costs – and here in this article, we will take you through the different tactics.

As per Google’s guidelines, the definition of keyword stuffing is essentially the practice of filling a web page with keywords and the ultimate goal is to skirt around the search engine and improve the ranking of the page.

Despite the several penalties and clampdowns, people who curate content and take care of SEO are still stuffing keywords without even realizing the fact that their page will suffer unexpected consequences that could have been avoided in the first place. Typically, keyword stuffing can be segregated into two distinct groups – visible and invisible.

Here we will describe both these in detail:

Visible keyword stuffing

This happens when you are unnaturally repeating a specific keyword or even trying to squeeze them in without any context. If the reader notices the unnatural flow in the article owing to misplaced words, it can be bracketed under visible keyword stuffing.

The other examples of visible keyword stuffing include inserting text blocks which often repeat a keyword as well as and link spamming.

Link spamming is also called spamdexing, and although, it is not directly visible keyword stuffing, the idea behind the practice is the same and the penalties levied are also strict. Hence, if you are looking to jam the content with various links that the search engine interprets as a keyword, it leads to hefty fines and repercussions.

Invisible keyword stuffing

This is where content creators become smart and instead of shoving keywords directly at the users, they simply hide the text as opposed to creating spammy and unreadable content. This is called invisible keyword stuffing.

Now, there are different ways through which one can hide keywords from readers, but then these can be picked up by search engine crawlers. Hence, one can make the color of the text and background the same, but at the same time, web page text is still HTML.

Hence, it can be spotted by the search engines when they crawl and try to index that web page. Apart from this, one can also stuff the keyword within the web page’s HTML code and this includes taking advantage of comment, meta, and/or alt tag – the places where they can be spotted by the search bots.

Hence, it should be understood here that stuffing your web pages with keywords will not help your search rankings. What we advise is that one should actually venture in the opposite direction and try to create a wholesome experience for users.

So, it essentially means that content creators should not simply add keywords just to get high in the rankings, but instead focus on the text which is naturally written as this will allow the users to go through the entire article and not leave the page – this will lead to lower bounce rate and in the long run, it will help you ace the SERP game.

Always, strive to optimize the content both ways – for the user and search engines.

Make sure to take a look at our SEO services.