There’s a seemingly intuitive – but in practice misguided – logic that continues to lead marketers astray when trying to optimize website content for SEO. Since search engines are designed to accept keywords as input and show search results that are most relevant to those terms, you might reason: “Why not cram those keywords into my content as much as possible?” Well, because you’ll be doing a lot more harm than good.
This practice is called keyword stuffing, and it actually used to be fairly successful – until search engines wised up to it and began penalizing websites that did it. Today, stuffing a keyword into your content too many times can actually knock the stuffing out of your search rankings, or even cause your content to be removed from search listings entirely.
Why is the practice of keyword stuffing so problematic?
Search engines are in the business of connecting an audience with the content that will satisfy their search intentions, which means they use algorithms that do their very best to favor high-quality, informative content. When content isn’t written for a human audience, but is instead structured to game an algorithm, the result is usually a spammy and artificial read that doesn’t serve a site visitor’s needs and (in almost all cases) doesn’t deserve their attention.
Consequently, keyword stuffing is rightfully considered a black hat[1] technique that goes against SEO best practices.
How does keyword stuffing work – and how do you know if you’re doing it?
Unfortunately, many marketers and content creators still practice keyword stuffing (believing it to be an advantageous strategy for the logic described above). However, doing so can and will cripple their sites’ standings with search engines