Most of us are aware that when you want your website or content to rank on the different search engines, one of the first and key things you need to do is keyword research. Finding the right keywords is crucial as that is how your target audience will find you. As much as adding keywords onto your website and content is an effective strategy, keyword stuffing will actually hurt the success of your website being noticed and you might actually get in trouble for it as you may incur harsh google penalties for it. With that being said, let’s dive into detail on what keyword stuffing is and how to avoid it.
What is keyword stuffing?🤔
Keyword stuffing is defined as the practice of filling or stuffing a larger than required volume of keywords in your content or website in hopes of ranking higher in the search engines. These keywords tend to be out of context and they don’t flow naturally as they should. According to Google, keyword stuffing is not only unethical but also an ineffective strategy to rank higher on the search engines. Google also gives us examples of keyword stuffing which includes; list of phone numbers without substantial added value, block of text that list cities and states that a webpage is trying to rank for and repeating the same words or phrases so many times making it sound unnatural eg. In store, we have floral dresses for your next event. Our floral dresses will make you stand out from the crowd. The floral dresses are good quality and affordable too. If you are looking for floral dresses get in touch with us and we will hook you up with one. This is considered as being too spammy keeping in mind you will still plan on introducing the target keywords elsewhere within the webpage. This brings us to keyword density.
What is keyword density?
Keyword density refers to the number of times a target keyword is used on a webpage compared to the total text on the webpage. Your keyword density is important for SEO mostly because search engines try to match a user’s queries to the best fitting webpage. Google needs to understand what your webpage is about and keywords tend to help with that. Therefore, use the keyphrase/keyword you would want to rank for in your copy and make sure it appears naturally and not forced. Note that there isn’t a set rule for how many times a keyword/keyphrase should appear on a page. One must use best SEO practices to guide them. For WordPress users, the Yoast Seo Plugin assesses whether you’ve used enough keywords in your copy or if you’ve overused them. Also another way you can avoid stuffing your webpage with a certain keyword/keyphrase is by looking for keyword stemming opportunities by coming up with long tail keywords. Examples of long tail keywords may include; keyword density checker, keyword density for Google, keyword density WordPress, best keyword density practices.
How can one avoid keyword stuffing?💡
Here are some helpful tips that will guide you on how to use keywords the right way.
Use your primary keyword per page
Choose one target keyword that is relevant to your content and topic. Also just like we mentioned above, go for long tail keywords that are popular so as to improve your chances of ranking on search engines for that keyword. It’s important that each webpage is assigned a different and unique target keyword so as to keep your pages from competing with each other.
Ensure you content is not thin
Thin content is content that has no much value to the reader or user. The minimum words your content should be is 300 words. Google usually tries to provide the best results that match the search intent of the user. It’s important that you convince google that your content will effectively answer the question the user has if you want to rank higher on a specific topic. Therefore, your content should be extensively written and well researched. Note that if your content is long enough and well written, it makes it possible to add in a few keywords in it.
Check what your competitors are doing
If you are still in the dark on how and where to place your keywords/keyphrases, this is a helpful strategy you can use to get an idea or guidance. Search for your target keyword on Google, then select the top 4 or 5 ranked pages that you get from the search results then lastly you can analyze these pages side by side. Note that some brands may rank higher mostly because they have been in the game longer and they have been building their authority and trust for a while hence their brand is much stronger. So if your website is new, analyze those websites that are smaller and not necessarily known websites that have still managed to rank high on Google.
Read more: SEO Friendly Content Writing Strategies, Optimizing Your Businesses Landing Page For SEO
