Avoid Keyword Stuffing and Other Black-Hat SEO Tricks
With keywords being synonymous with search engine optimization (SEO), you might be tempted to just stuff as many of your targeted keywords into your content as possible. The more times a keyword is present, the greater chance of Google ranking you higher, right? Wrong. This is considered a “black-hat” SEO technique. While in the past people did this to trick Google, updated algorithms catch sites that do this and now keyword stuffing can get your site blacklisted.
Google penalizes keyword stuffing because they care more about the user experience than beating the system (and so should you).
No one wants to read a whole page of text that just repeats the same word or words over and over. It provides no benefit to the reader in that situation.
Look at the following example that a content creator might try to use:
While the content creator might think that this will give them a boost, it will actually hurt their SEO ranking and cause a drop in traffic. Google doesn’t like to see it and neither do humans. This is a sure-fire way to have a high bounce rate and prevent people from ever wanting to return.
You still need at least some keywords in your content though—what should you do? A good practice to follow would be to include your target keyword in 2-5% of that page’s content.
While the SEO benefit of NOT keyword stuffing is apparent, there also is a secondary benefit to you. When you write for humans, your content instantly becomes more shareable. When you get more shares and more backlinks, your traffic increases, and consequently, you receive a ranking increase.
SEO is a great way to significantly increase relevant traffic to your website. While you might think keyword stuffing is a way to speed up that process, it does more harm than good.
Avoid getting blacklisted by Google—write for humans with an intent to truly provide value.
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