SEO and Keyword Stuffing

SEO as a marketing tool involves the use of specially targeted keywords placed within Meta tags or content on web pages.  It is these keywords that drive traffic to a site as they are what people use in their searches.  Keywords are also what drive higher rankings.  Yet there is a fine line between the proper use of keywords and keyword stuffing.

Search engines form rules that dictate one cannot place as many keywords as they want anywhere within their web content.  They will only tolerate a certain word count per page or pages.  By using an algorithm they decide the ratio between word count and keyword density.  In other words, if your page contains around 400 words then your keyword density or keyword count should only be around 1%-2% of that count.  If you ignore this rule you run the risk of having your site being banned from a search engine.  What you are doing in their ‘eyes’ is keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing is not a good idea

SEO is a very beneficial internet marketing practice, but only if you don’t tangle with a search engines rules and regulations.  In fact you could say that search engines prohibited keyword stuffing.  It is unethical SEO practice as it is looked at as being a way to trick the search engine spiders into providing higher rankings.

Yet you need keywords in order to get rankings and it is important that your keywords are worked into your content in a way that they add maximum value, are not out of place and are not misused.

Search engines and keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is perhaps the widest used black hat technique on the World Wide Web.  It used to work fine and many website designers cottoned onto it and haven’t yet ‘un-cottoned’.  Other times SEO experts are so ‘gung ho’ about pushing a client’s website up to the top of rankings that they may resort to dubious methods to do it.

As a client you may be none the wiser until you realise too late.  If you are hiring an SEO expert to run your campaign for you it is suggested that you investigate your keyword count.

Invisible keyword stuffing

Investigating your keyword count in the event of invisible keyword stuffing may be difficult.  Invisible text is really considered black hat technique as it entails placing text within web pages that is exactly the same colour as the background.  The reason behind this is so that text cannot be seen by the naked eye.  But don’t be too alarmed.  Invisible text is well noticed by search engine spiders and the creators of invisible text are relying on spiders to find them and index them, this also includes Meta tags.

What is the solution?

The only solution is to keep giving spider’s fresh new content and lots of it.  Your Meta tags should contain the true meaning of your site so that your web pages can be interpreted and indexed.  While this is an important part of SEO sticking to good practices that wont get you into trouble are perhaps more important.

Related posts:

1. Is keyword stuffing ever good policy?
2. The rise and fall of keyword stuffing
3. Why is keyword stuffing ineffective for SEO?
4. Keyword stuffing is not a key to success
5. Keyword stuffing actually does nothing

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 9:16 am and is filed under SEO Sins & Mistakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.