Avoid Keyword Stuffing!

One of the main focuses of all internet marketers these days is to find a way to avoid getting banned or penalized in the ranks by Google. That, and of course improving their google ranking by doing white-hat SEO.

A tactic which used to be practised a lot more before google did it’s penguin and panda algorithm updates is keyword stuffing.

Basically keyword stuffing is when a website overuses one or many specific keywords in different places on their website to improve search engine rankings. There are many ways of doing this. Some of the ways to do keyword stuffing can be in a sentence where the keyword(s) are repeated unnaturally; either in the anchor text, adding the keyword where it isn’t relevant or bolding keywords. All these tactics used to have a great affect on the websites’ ranking. It still does actually, but not for long thanks to the much improved (objectively speaking) Google algorithms.

Internet marketers reading this have a reason to be nervous if they are guilty in keyword stuffing. But at what stage is using keywords defined as keyword stuffing. A good estimate to when it is called keyword stuffing is, according to many, when a keyword is used more than 1% on the website. This is an estimate though. The main advice for people worrying about being penalized for keyword stuffing is to keep the content of one's site natural and relevant. Write for the sake of the users and not for the sake of a better ranking. Obviously, ranking matters to every internet marketer, but there are other, more white-hat, tactics which are more safe and effective.

So as long as you don’t think about keyword stuffing, chances are that google won’t penalize you and as an added bonus your content will be a pleasant read for your users.