Keyword Stuffing: How to Just Avoid It

What is keyword stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is the process of filling a webpage with a specific target term – either visibly or concealed to the reader – in an effort to rank higher for that term on search engines.

Types of keyword stuffing

There are two main types of keyword stuffing, visible and concealed. Search engines can pick up on both.

Writing for SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization, can be a confusing endeavor as we try to rank higher for our target keywords by pleasing the Google algorithm gods.

It may be tempting to try to hack the system by keyword stuffing to try and ‘trick’ Google into ranking your content higher. But Google is a lot smarter than you think. It can tell when an article is unnecessarily stuffed with keywords in a spammy way. Shortcuts like these can actually wind up dramatically decreasing your rankings or even get your pages delisted altogether.

If you want to optimize your website for search engines, avoid keyword stuffing and instead focus on white hat SEO tactics to improve your page rankings, better your content marketing, and drive traffic to your site. In this article, we’ll break down how.

What’s the problem with keyword stuffing?

The most obvious reason why keyword stuffing is problematic is because it provides a terrible experience for your readers. Nobody wants to read content full of repeated words that add not value.

Content should aim to educate and engage your audience – and when you’re stuffing articles with the same term over and over, it doesn’t fulfill this purpose. Readers will be unsatisfied and likely leave your website quickly, increasing bounce rates and ultimately driving people away from your business.

The ironic part is people keyword stuff in an attempt to bring in more traffic to their site, but it usually does the opposite.

To help higher quality content rank better, Google search penalizes sites that it detects are keyword stuffing, and may remove your page from its results altogether.

Google itself states this in its guidelines: “Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.”

How to avoid keyword stuffing (and get your content ranking)

Here’s how to avoid this common SEO mistake and use keyword optimization effectively:

1. Focus on one primary keyword and a few secondary keywords

Each page or article on your site should have a single primary keyword it is trying to target that matches real people’s search intentions.

Ideally, your primary keyword should be a popular search term that you want to rank for.

When you focus each page on one primary keyword, search engines can better understand what each page’s content is about and greatly improve your chances of ranking higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

It also helps avoid keyword cannibalization, which can happen when two or more of your pages are fighting to rank for the same keywords.

You can also choose around two to five secondary keywords that are related keywords. These may be long-tail keyword variations of the primary keyword, synonyms, or just closely related to the topic at hand, and can be used a number of times in lieu of your primary term.

For example: Let’s say your main keyword is “espresso.” Based on keyword research, you may find some long-tail variations to target such as “best espresso machine,” “what is espresso,” and “how to make espresso” in your SEO strategy.

But how do you find what keywords are best to target for your specific piece of content? You’ll need to do proper research using a tool like Similarweb’s keyword research tool.

Pro tip: Generate thousands of new keyword ideas in an instant – based on trends, near-phrase matches, and question queries using our Keyword Generator.

2. Write informative content

This may seem like a no-brainer, but many content creators get so focused on little details of optimizing for SEO that they forget to write high-quality content that’s actually useful and informative!

Don’t forget that real humans are coming to your page to learn about a topic and gain insights. You should do your best to meet their needs, anticipate what questions they want answered and provide accurate facts and figures. Simply put, write what you’d want to read.

3. Include the keywords naturally

As you focus on creating high-quality content, the keywords you want to target will wind up flowing naturally within your text.

There are some places you should try to include your primary keyword, however, such as:

• Page title
• H1
• Subheading(s)
• Introduction
• Conclusion
• Relevant parts of the content’s body
• Meta description
• Image alt description(s), if relevant to the image
• Featured snippets

Making sure your primary keyword is included in these places ensures both your audience and search engines alike know your content’s focus. Google often prefers in-depth long-form content – in fact, the average word count for a Google first page result is about 1,500 words. With long-form content, you don’t need to try to fit your target phrases in where they don’t fit since you’ll have plenty of opportunities to use them throughout your piece.

4. Optimize your page in other ways

There are many other factors that search engines look out for besides just great content, including improving backlinks, internal links, domain authority, and engagement metrics.

Backlinks to your site from other authoritative websites show search engines that other websites trust your content and believe it offers their readers value.

Creating an internal linking strategy is another way to optimize your site for search. This is where you link from one page on your website to another, which helps both users and search engines navigate your site and find useful information easily. When many pages link to a page on your site from a specific keyword you signal to Google that this is an important page that’s highly relevant for that keyword. This is one of the basic but most trustworthy on-page SEO tactics.

Additionally, search engines will recognize your experience and expertise in a specific topic if you publish in-depth info on various related topics, and will view you as an authority in the field as a result.

Optimizing for engagement is also crucial. Improving UI and UX can require valuable resources. Tracking your engagement metrics and optimizing when necessary boosts standing in the eyes of Google and also ensures you don’t waste resources.

For example, with Similarweb you can compare your website’s engagement metrics with your organic competitors. In the image below hm.com is the winner for most pages per visit with 18.87 pages for visit on average, while bershka.com is falling behind the pack with just 10.47 pages per visit.

In this case, bershka.com would know they have room to optimize their website to improve their pages per visit and this could also benefit search.

These are just a few ways you can optimize your website.

For a more in-depth guide on this topic, check out our article – Content Optimization 101.

Take the next step

It’s clear that keyword stuffing benefits no one – not readers or your search ranking. Reaching your audience requires more than avoiding keyword stuffing though.

Similarweb Digital Marketing intelligence helps you track your website engagement metrics and keyword data for your website and your competitive landscape.

With this complete picture you can pinpoint opportunities and gaps and start climbing the ranks effectively and strategically.

Ready to delve into the data? Try Similarweb now for free.