In the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) content is still king. It’s at the heart of every digital marketing strategy because without it businesses wouldn’t be able to communicate effectively with their audience, build a strong brand identity or make use of SEO strategies like keyword research to boost their SERP (Search Engine Result Placement).
What you say and how you say it (or in this case what you write and how you write it), matters. The words you use are key in the world of SEO (they don’t call them keywords for nothing). They’re an essential element of creating search engine-optimised content as part of your overall strategy and starting on the road to better SERP. However, using the right keywords also requires the right ratio. It’s fair to assume the more you fill a webpage with keywords, the higher you’ll rank in search engines and the more web traffic you’ll drive to your site. But this is a common misconception. Oversaturating content with a specific search term has a name—keyword stuffing—and it’s a misguided practice.
With this in mind, let’s get into everything you need to know about keyword stuffing.
What is Keyword Density?
I like to think of optimising content with keywords as the seasoning in a recipe. A perfectly cooked steak is bland without a sprinkle of salt to enhance the flavour, but too much can kill the dish. When you oversaturate on-page content with keywords, you run the risk of making it look like spam. And I don’t mean the overly salty processed meat (although this works with the cooking metaphor), but content Google reads as untrustworthy and poor-quality. Keyword stuffing ends up doing more harm than good for your rankings and hiking up your digital marketing cost in the long term.
When you want to improve your website’s ranking and increase organic traffic, you need to use keywords. But how many keywords are enough? How many is too many? How can we tell? That’s where the concept of keyword density comes in.
Keyword density (or frequency) refers to the number of times a certain keyword appears on a webpage in comparison to the overall word count of the content. You’ll often see it reported as a percentage or ratio; the higher the number, the more the keyword appears on the webpage.
To determine keyword density, simply divide the number of times the keyword appears by the number of words in the content piece. Multiple this by 100, and you get a percentage.
We already know keywords are critical for website success, and you can’t just go around stuffing them at random on every webpage. So, when you’re writing up SEO-optimised content, you should know: use too few keywords, and you won’t rank; use too many, and you’re in stuffing territory.
What is Keyword Stuffing?
The term “keyword stuffing” refers to the overuse of certain keywords (or phrases) in the content of a webpage with hopes of optimising it to rank higher for that specific term on the search engine results page. This practice is also commonly called a “black hat” SEO tactic.
There are two forms of keyword stuffing: visible and invisible. Let’s break them both down below:
Visible
The more obvious of the two, visible stuffing, is when specific keywords or phrases are excessively and unnecessarily repeated throughout webpage content. This can look like heedlessly inserted keywords, unnecessary repetition and lists that are oversaturated with the target term. Visible keyword stuffing often looks unnatural and forced, so it’s really easy to notice. When content is oversaturated with a specific term, it can make it harder to read and comprehend. Let’s use the keyword “white t-shirts” as an example.
Not only does the content sound unnatural, but the keyword density percentage is just over 14% when you should be aiming for approximately 2%.
Invisible
The second type—invisible stuffing—is more covert. This tactic involves aspects of a website that are not directly noticeable to visitors, including meta descriptions, title tags, meta keyword lists, image alt text or even an unseen body of text. Take a look:
It might seem like a good idea to try to hide text by using a white font on a white background to make it indistinguishable, but even though visitors may not see this, search engine crawlers can easily detect it.
Does Keyword Stuffing Impact Rankings?
It’s a question on every digital marketer’s lips: Does keyword stuffing impact rankings?
To answer this, let’s revisit the phrase “content is king”. It should come with a disclaimer—high-quality content is king. Google rewards high-quality, person-first content by boosting it in the SERPs. Because keyword stuffing involves unnatural keyword insertion, it looks spammy and often results in poor-quality content that discourages users from interacting with the webpage or brand. The poor quality of the content therefore signals to Google it’s not valuable.
In short—yes, keyword stuffing impacts ranking.
How Keyword Stuffing Affects SEO
When it comes to the quality of content, particularly content on YMYL websites, Google takes it very seriously, and so should you.
Keyword stuffing reduces readability, resembles spam and can drastically undermine the quality of content. The result? Your website loses credibility, your brand image is tarnished, user experience is negatively impacted and people start to steer clear and click away.
A lot of digital marketing is about user experience and creating a positive customer journey. Your content needs to be user-centric, and successful SEO strategies take this into account. When you create content stuffed with keywords, you’re putting focus on rankings and not readers. When Google detects unnatural, excessive and unnecessary keyword usage, it’s unlikely the content will rank well.
Above all else, the practice of keyword spamming actually violates Google’s spam policies.
Beware of the Keyword Stuffing Penalty
It used to be super easy to manipulate Google’s SERP to boost your webpage’s visibility because search engines relied on simpler algorithms way back when. But over time, they have become a lot smarter and it’s now much harder, with search engines like Google issuing a keyword stuffing penalty for misuse.
Google penalties are punishments that can negatively impact a website’s rankings and the consequences of a keyword stuffing penalty can be severe—we’re talking about a drop in ranking for a particular search term at best or having your webpage suppressed or removed from search results at worst. That’s why you need to be careful when creating content.
How to Avoid Keyword Stuffing
No one wants their website to be penalised for poor keyword practices. Here are some basic best practice strategies to help you avoid keyword stuffing.
Pick One Primary Keyword Per Page
Step one of optimising your webpage for search engines is to choose a target keyword. You know what your webpage is all about so it’s time to narrow down the main intent and select a single keyword. Each webpage should use a unique target keyword to prevent different pages from battling against one another for a spot in SERPs.
When you choose to focus on a single target keyword, it sends a clear message to search engines about the content of the page. This makes it much easier for readers to find the necessary information.
Add the Right Keywords to the Right Page Elements
It’s not just the main body of content that matters. It also might not be enough to optimise your page for keywords. Effective search engine optimisation also depends on using the right keywords in different page elements. To ensure your webpage is fully optimised, you need to be added across the following key elements:
- Title tag
- Meta description
- Page title
- Image alt tag
- Subheadings
- The beginning and end of the text
Remember—once is enough in each element, otherwise, you’ll overdo it.
Create Longer, More Relevant Content
At the end of the day, you’re creating content for users. Focus on creating longer content that’s authentic and informative. When your content covers topics in detail and provides helpful information, it’s more valuable to users and more likely to get attention from search engines. Plus, the longer the word count, the more room you have to place relevant keywords without oversaturating the content.
Write Naturally
When you’re trying to rank higher for a specific search term, it’s easy to become so focused on the keyword and fixated on inserting it that your writing starts to sound forced and unnatural. Google wants to provide users with the best-quality results, so it’s looking for valuable content. If your content is written poorly and is difficult to read, Google will consider it low-quality and it won’t help your rankings.
Calculate Your Content’s Keyword Density
Once you’ve written up your content, it’s time to calculate its keyword density using the formula mentioned earlier. As a rule of thumb, it’s recommended you ensure your keyword density percentage is below 2% to stay within the parameters of best practice.
Consult the Specialists in SEO
Keyword stuffing isn’t a quick fix for optimisation. Polishing up your digital presence takes time, patience and work. As the brand behind the online brands, WebOracle has worked with many businesses across Australia to strengthen their SEO strategy and drive their growth in the digital sphere. If you want to work with an SEO agency in Melbourne, get in touch with us to see how we can help you grow, develop and enhance your business.
