The term key-word stuffing has nothing to do with the edible concoction of vegetables, spices and bread that adds heft to a meat dish. In years past, however, many Web denizens crammed keywords into their sites to game Google, and other Web crawlers and get to page one of the search results. They literally stuffed their websites with popular keywords, and the result was a concoction all right, but of a particularly indigestible kind.
Keywords are really nothing more than the most common words or phrases that people searching the Web enter into the search box. Sprinkling (rather than stuffing) popular key words into website design and relevant content is the only thing that works now, because Google and the rest are on to the stuffing scam and will definitely penalize — if not exclude altogether — any website that tries it.
The classic joke about this topic goes: “An SEO walks into a bar, bars, beer garden, hangout, lounge, night club, mini bar, bar stool, tavern, pub, beer, wine, whiskey.”
What is keyword stuffing, really?
Keyword stuffing isn’t just inserting a block or list of keywords helter-skelter on web pages. Here are three examples:
- Repeating keywords and phrases unnaturally. Here’s an example using “cheap athletic shoes”: “Are you looking for cheap athletic shoes? If you need cheap athletic shoes, look no further. Our cheap athletic shoes website… etc.”
- Using alternate keyword phrases that mean the same thing: “Are you looking for cheap athletic shoes? If you need inexpensive athletic footwear, look no further. Our low-cost athletic running shoes…etc.”
- Creating bad (or awkward) grammar or phrasing with keywords and including locations: “Cheap Los Angeles athletic shoes can be difficult to locate…”
“Another keyword stuffing tactic was the excessive use of the keyword in the title, in headings, and throughout the content. Keywords were popping up all over the place. And again Google caught on and began penalizing this keyword stuffing tactic.”
Obviously, the penalty of being banished from Google’s first page was pretty severe for the site owners, but welcome relief for most users. (Most Web users rarely proceed beyond page one for any search.) But, according to Remetch, “for many that fear is irrational.” Don’t sprinkle keywords unnaturally and redundantly into your website, but follow this advice:
“If a keyword fits naturally into the content without looking forced it is ok to use [the] keyword as often as needed and you won’t go to Google jail for keyword stuffing.”
What does Google look for?
All the SEO experts agree that given the most recent changes to Google, the most important thing you can do is just be natural, but create a lot of content. One of the key things Google looks for is how current your site is. You can have lots of great pages, but there’s a real sense of “What have you done for me lately?” permeating all search results these days.
Staying out of “Google Jail”
Anyone interested in (1) knowing what Google considers the best practices in SEO and keyword use, and (2) knowing how to apply those practices in optimal website design only needs to read Google’s free Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. The strictures against keyword stuffing appear in the context of what to avoid. For example:
“Stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.” (Alt text is used by text browser that can’t view images.)
and
“stuffing unneeded keywords into your title tags.” (Tags are those little yellow text boxes that pop up when you run your cursor over coded text.)
How can you avoid keyword stuffing?
In addition to laying off the spam tactics, here’s how you can give your readers and customers the best Web experience:
- Read up on and use the Long-Tail Method when writing your page or topic titles. This is a brilliantly simple method of targeting general, medium-sized and focused searchers. In short, even though there are billions of Google searches every day, 20 percent of ALL searches have never happened before. People are wonderfully complex and individual, and the stuff they search for and the way they search for it is, too.
- Only use keywords that are totally relevant to your topic or product. Think about how your potential customers would search for you.
- Finally, the very best advice is the most stunningly simple approach: Don’t over-think the problem. Just concentrate on producing naturally useful content that uses the best keywords in the most natural context. Providing authentic valuable content that both informs your customers and boosts your Google ranking is key to success. The Google search engine always rewards the best content with a high ranking on its hit parade.
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