Appropriate SEO: Avoiding Keyword Stuffing

Ah, keyword stuffing. It’s the one thing you scold your kids not to do and yet they keep doing it of the SEO world. Whether it’s because they’re way behind the times and don’t know any better or because they just don’t want to listen, there are still websites that practice keyword stuffing to try to get ahead in the SEO game. So let’s start this out by quickly putting any questions to rest and stating most definitively: keyword stuffing is bad. That’s it. There’s no grey area, there are no exceptions, none, nada. Throwing keywords into a page in the hopes of moving up in the Google rankings is a thing of the past – the way back, hot tub time machine past.

Once upon a time keywords held all the power. If your website sold Flibbertigibbets you needed to have that keyword on your website or the Google bots had no way of knowing what your website was selling and how to categorize you. (We’ll come back to this). So when the SEO world learned of this they applied the old “more is better” adage and began stuffing that website so full of keywords that some of them were impossible to read and actually worthless to the visitor. Some even used keywords in the background in the same color as the page so they human eye didn’t see them but the bots did. And with this a new way to scam people and direct them to worthless, fraudulent and even hazardous websites was born. Now you can see why keyword stuffing quickly became a horrible thing and the scourge of the legitimate SEO world.

So let’s go back to that idea of search engines categorizing you and keywords. Clearly not all keywords are bad and you still need to have legitimate, well researched and useful ones to help your website reach the target audience. Because keyword stuffing became such a horrible tactic, websites that used this approach were often banned and some people started to have an irrational fear of legitimate keyword usage. This unreasoned fear can also have a negative impact on your website because if you do not let it be known that you sell Flibbertigibbets no one will ever find you.

Unfortunately there is no magic number of times or percentage of times you should be using a keyword. Sometimes it flows more easily and naturally in your content and you can work that word or phrase in more often. Other times it’s harder to do. The important takeaway here, other than to never use keyword stuffing as a strategy, is to do your homework and select appropriate keywords that resonate with your particular audience and then use them in a logical way that is informative and enlightening without being forced or contrived.

If you’re looking for ways to craft compelling content for your website with keywords that are researched and selected by SEO specialists, contact Filament. We’d be glad to help.