What is Keyword Stuffing?
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of excessively repeating keywords on a webpage. It is done to manipulate a webpage’s search engine rankings and raise it to the top of search results pages.
While keyword stuffing is commonly used to refer to keywords stuffed into a webpage’s visible content, the term also extends to keywords stuffed into the webpage’s URL along with its non-visible content, including its HTML code, meta tags, image alt tags, and anchor texts pointing to the page.
Keyword stuffing worked when search engines used keyword density to determine the relationship between a keyword and the content. However, search engines have updated their algorithms over time, and whether it still works is open to speculation.
That said, keyword stuffing is a black hat SEO technique. Search engines have gotten better at detecting it, and Google will demote the rankings or deindex webpages that engage in it.
SEO Importance of Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing has little to no long-term SEO benefits. It violates Google Search Essential guidelines and could cause Google to issue you a manual action penalty.
Keyword stuffing also makes content hard to read, leading to a poor user experience. This discourages visitors from interacting with your page and encourages them to leave, further reducing your rankings.
Google has algorithms to identify keyword stuffing. It has even released major algorithm updates, like Penguin, to target sites engaged in such practices.
Examples of Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing includes techniques like inserting multiple keywords into a piece of content. In this case, the content will contain several keywords the blogger wants the page to rank for. For example:
“Our store offers the best cheap shoes, affordable shoes, discount shoes, and low-cost shoes for sale at our shoe store.”
Another common tactic is to repeat a keyword the blogger wants to rank for. For example, the sentence below repeatedly mentions yoga mats:
“Shop our wide selection of yoga mats for the perfect yoga mat to enhance your yoga practice. Our yoga mats are made with high-quality materials, making them the best yoga mats for yoga enthusiasts looking for durable and comfortable yoga mats.”
Keyword stuffing could also be subtle and not-so-evident to the visitor. However, search engines can identify them. For example, the store description below mentions pizza and restaurant more times than necessary:
“Our pizza restaurant is known for its delicious pizza toppings and authentic Italian pizza crust. Visit our pizza restaurant today for the best pizza experience. Our pizza restaurant serves the best pizza in town.”
The exact implementation of keyword stuffing differs from site to site. While some sites repeat words more than necessary, others create entire paragraphs containing as many keywords as possible, separated only by commas.
Sites that engage in this aggressive form of keyword stuffing usually include the keywords as hidden text on a page. That way, they will be invisible to visitors but visible to search engines.
Why Keyword Stuffing Used to Work
Keyword stuffing worked back when Google used a keyword’s frequency to determine the relationship between a keyword and content. At the time, the more times a keyword appeared on a webpage, the likelier the webpage was assumed to be related to the keyword.
So, webpages with high keyword densities were likelier to rank for a keyword, even if it was not so closely related. Bloggers of the day discovered this and started to stuff keywords into their content.
Google clamped down on sites using black hat SEO techniques like keyword stuffing when it released the Penguin update on April 24, 2012. Google later added Penguin to its core algorithm, which means it now identifies keyword stuffing in real-time.
The effect of keyword stuffing has further reduced over time as Google started using AI language models like BERT to analyze search queries. These days, Google is less interested in matching keywords with search queries and more concerned about returning results that match the search intent.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is Keyword Stuffing a Ranking Factor?
Keyword stuffing is not a ranking factor. If anything, keyword stuffing will cause you to lose rankings as it violates Google search guidelines. So, Google will demote the rankings of pages involved in keyword stuffing or even remove them from search results pages altogether.