SEO Myths: Keyword Stuffing
This post is about keyword stuffing. If you don’t know what keyword stuffing is all about, keep reading and soon you’ll understand everything there is to know about keyword stuffing, including the basic concepts of keyword stuffing and how to use keyword stuffing to enhance your blog posts.
(Just kidding about that last one. Don’t do this).
Wasn’t that incredibly irritating?
If I read something like that on someone’s website or blog, it’s totally clear to me that that writer has no interest in me as a reader; the only thing they’re concerned about is search engines.
Keyword stuffing is a persistent SEO myth that is all about what you read up there at the top: picking a keyword phrase as the topic of your post and jamming as many instances of it as you can in your writing. Google’s definition is: “the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results.”
It looks like spam. People don’t want to read it, and other blogs won’t link to yours if you do it.
The myth is that keyword density – the number of times a keyword phrase appears in a page – is one of the ranking factors used by search engines.
This is not the case. Check out the Search Engine Ranking Factors compiled by MOZ, and notice that ‘keyword density’ doesn’t show up on the list. We can drill down to just the factors related to page keyword usage, including things like:
- Keyword usage in the title tag/H1
- Keyword usage in the body text
- Keyword usage in the meta description
Yes, it is important to use your keyword phrase in your post or page – but use it wisely. Write naturally. Don’t overuse keywords and you won’t come across as a search engine spammer.