Content Marketing
What Is Keyword Stuffing?
Are you using too many keywords in your content? Learn what keyword stuffing is, how it can impact your content, and how much is too much.
Once a widely used way to get content to the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), keyword stuffing is now seen as little more than a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique.
Although content marketing and SEO best practices advise that you should include keywords in articles to rank well on search engines — there is a line. If you cross that line, you’ll end up doing more harm than good.
Explore what keyword stuffing is, why it’s bad, how much is too much, and how you can identify it in your content.
To clarify what keyword stuffing is and answer the popular question, “Why is keyword stuffing bad?” — let’s review the definition of keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing describes when someone tries to jam-pack content with target keywords to rank higher on the SERPs. There are two types: visible and invisible.
Visible keyword stuffing is the easiest to spot.
Here’s an example of visible keyword stuffing with the target keyword “water bottles”:
Our top-of-the-line water bottles are perfect for any occasion. Whether you need water bottles for sports, trips, or hanging out at home, these budget-friendly water bottles will keep your water cold for hours. There are no better water bottles on the market today! Water bottles.
That’s a lot of water bottles in one paragraph! Some people may even try to work their desired keywords into unrelated topics. Not only does this ruin the readability of their content, but it makes their attempts to engage in this black hat SEO practice even more obvious.
Beyond visible stuffing in the main text, it’s also possible to find it in:
Since visible keyword stuffing methods result in awkward-sounding content, some content creators engage in invisible keyword stuffing on their websites.
Examples of invisible keyword stuffing include:
Now, you may be wondering: if it isn’t ruining the look and feel of my articles, why not go the invisible route? The average reader may not be able to tell, but search engine crawlers can — and Google’s not a fan.
In short, keyword stuffing is bad because it has the opposite effect of its intentions: it penalizes content rather than promoting it in the SERPs.
Once upon a time, content marketers engaging in keyword stuffing were more likely to see higher search engine rankings than face penalties. However, this was when search engines were more concerned with term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) than they are today.
While Google started targeting spammy content with its Florida update in 2003, it wasn’t until its 2011 Panda update that keyword stuffing really began to impact search engine rankings. Suddenly, pages stuffed to the brim with keywords were being demoted on the SERPs due to Google’s new emphasis on providing searchers with helpful, relevant content.
In its 2022 helpful content update, Google essentially told creators to start writing for people, not search engines! After all, no one is heading to Google to see who can stuff the most keywords into their articles and blog posts.
People are looking for helpful, valuable information from search engines, so low-quality, spammy content stuffed with keywords isn’t great for user experience.
If they do end up clicking on this kind of content, they’ll likely navigate away from it pretty quickly. This can result in a high bounce rate and damage brand reputation.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic number here, as the ideal keyword density can vary by niche and topic. However, the general recommendation is to aim for roughly 1-2% keyword density. Once you start heading toward that 3% mark, you may be at risk of keyword stuffing.
Of course, it’s hard to just look at a piece of content to determine if you’re within that ideal density range. Fortunately, optimizing content with keyword density checks is easy with the right tools.
An excellent way to review content is to use a readability checker with a keyword density feature. After analyzing the text, it’ll tell you how often top words and phrases appear in the content. If certain ones are coming up far too often, you’ll know where to focus for editing.
Since there’s no magic number, it can help to see what the keyword density is for the top-ranking pages on search engines. This is where a content optimizer comes in handy.
With a content optimizer, you begin by entering your target keyword, the URL or text of your content, and the top URLs already ranking for that keyword (a quick Google search should do the trick).
Once you submit everything, the content optimization tool will start comparing the keyword density of your content with the competition.
After the tool does its thing, you’ll see the keyword counts and percentages for you and your competitors. If the percentage is red beside a keyword, its density is too high. But if it’s green, it’s in the ideal range.
You can then edit, add, and subtract keywords from your text, so that your density is aligned with top-performing pages.
It’s best to avoid keyword stuffing. Neither search engines nor readers like it. Instead, focus on using keywords naturally and strategically. Spread them throughout your text so they flow with the copy. Sure, it’ll take a little more time, but with a keyword density checker by your side, the process is a breeze!
