Table of contents
What keyword stuffing of a Web Page is
Keyword stuffing is an SEO practice that consists of using the same or similar keywords over and over again, saturating the same piece of content with them to manipulate search engine results pages.
What it is used for
This technique was very popular in the first decade of the 2000s because of its effectiveness in manipulating Google results.
Today this practice barely counts for positioning any content and is penalized because it goes against Google’s quality guidelines.
Except for laziness or carelessness, almost no webmaster risks using this technique.
What behaviors are considered Keyword Stuffing
Any writing pattern that involves repeating the same keywords over and over again is considered Keyword Stuffing by Google.
The best way to avoid this is to not repeat the same term by measuring the density of a keyword in a text or piece of content.
Many professionals claim that a keyword density below 1% is sufficient.
However, this is only a recommendation because Google has not made this data official, and probably never will.
Therefore, using the keyword in your texts repeatedly without trying to respond to the user’s search intent is a way of creating “spammy” content in the eyes of the user and the search engine itself.
This strategy will result in users and search engines rating your content as low quality.
An Example of Keyword Stuffing
Google itself, in its quality guidelines for webmasters, gives us a clear example of what Keyword Stuffing consists of.
Here you can see an example:
In this text, the word “humidificadores de cigarros” is repeated up to 4 times.
It is unnatural, monotonous, and very repetitive.
In addition to this type of text, Google emphasizes the danger of abusing lists or enumerations both geographical (countries, cities, streets, etc…) and numbers (e.g. phone numbers) that do not provide any concrete context.
Try to avoid them.
And create natural content that is not repetitive or redundant.
Tips to avoid “over-optimizing” a keyword
The truth is that it is easy to avoid keyword stuffing if you know how to.
However, we do not always succeed in doing so.
The simplest rule is to present a natural text with a low frequency of repetitions of the main to-be-positioned keyword, using similar semantic concepts, synonyms, and expressions that help you avoid using exact keywords.
But that does not always leave us out of danger.
That’s why, below, we give you the writing guidelines that we follow in all our texts:
- Optimize each URL for one search intent and one search intent only.
- Create long content only if it makes sense.
- Keep keyword density low.
- Use secondary keywords, synonyms, and related topics.
- Use the keyword in the slug, page headers, and meta tags without overuse.
- Measure the keyword density of your texts.
All this will help you to contextualize your content, making its ranking easy for search engines and, above all, helping users to answer their questions.
Avoid at all costs that the latter have the feeling that they are reading a text optimized for a robot or a repetitive one.
In conclusion:
Unlike keyword-stuffed pages that simply repeat the same keyword over and over again to manipulate search engine results, you should publish well-structured content, provides value to users, and feels like it is written for people.
In turn, this will help the search engines by using keywords as clues in strategic SEO locations.
And finally, take the time to use synonyms and related terms and avoid using the same keyword as a filler.
Tools and recommended readings:
Frequently Asked Questions
Keyword stuffing is penalized by search engines. This technique is an indicator of low-quality content and texts for search engines. If you want to know how to avoid it on your website, it is necessary to know what it is.
The best way to avoid using a keyword too often is to use keyword density. To do this, install an SEO plugin in your CMS or use a tool for this purpose.