Keywords; one of the most crucial components and what determines the fall and rise of a website. By adding content related keywords into a website as well as its meta titles and descriptions to help drive traffic into the website.
Organic SEO Keywords
Organically when Google’s users searches have one or more keywords related to your website content, Google will then find websites with related content and dump them on the result page for users to browse through. So, if users encountered your website on the result page and click on it, the particular keyword used in the search then both the keyword and your website will slowly climb up to the top of the result page.
However, driving traffic to your website organically requires a lot of time and resources before you can see results. And some people, they want to see the numbers go up immediately. This is when keyword stuffing employed by an seo consultant or an seo agency.
Peeking At How SEO Keyword Stuffing Works
Now that we have a basic understanding of how organic practice works, we can take a look at how keyword stuffing works. Why we need to have a basic understanding of how organic traffic and keyword ranking work? Because, that way you can see why keyword stuffing is—how to say this–considered unethical. Especially in Google’s eyes, they despise it.
Keyword stuffing is, if subtly put; it is unethical or the more the harsher way to put it; an attack towards the users. Why it is viewed so negatively? Well, keyword stuffing is done by inserting a large number keywords variation of related topic onto a website. And it is not limited to just the content but all over the website itself. The font colour changed to be the same as the background colour, hiding the keyword behind an image, creating a small text box at the bottom of the page, or just straight out turkey stuffing the same paragraph/sentence with keywords.
Those keyword stuffing practices mentioned above are often employ to direct traffic to fraudulent and malicious websites, hence adding the reason why it is viewed negatively by digital marketing community.
But Some Claims It Works. Really Now?
Despite those kind views, there are some seo consultants or seo agencies put keyword stuffing to use to help rank a website. But does it even work and worth risking your business for? There are some claiming that it works, however the majority votes say that it doesn’t. The reason being that, yes, the website may be placed at the top of the search results but it won’t be able to retain visitors. Because visitors will be itching to get out of your website all thanks to the stuffed turkey content you have going on.
Okay, imagine landing on a website with this kind of content greeting you:
“Welcome to Cheap Running Shoes online shop, where you can buy cheap running cheap shoes for yourself. Check out cheap running shoes but with great designs.”
Well, isn’t that just comes as annoying and forceful, you know, like those door to door salesmen. Or like some strange dude that jumps out of a bush and started selling. And I’m writing from firsthand experience of my encounter with an seo consultant that did this.
Due to this, the bounce rate will increase overtime and the website will have a hard time ranking. Why? Because Google bots will considered the website to be irrelevant and unimportant due to high bounce rates. Worst case scenario; Google will flag the website as a spam website and take it down, permanently.
So, in a nutshell (after all that babbling) no, it isn’t worth the risk. There are more cons than pros when employing keyword stuffing as one of SEO strategies.
Modesty Is The Best Policy
Though this doesn’t mean you should not have a good amount of keywords on the website, it just that should be done in moderation. Much like everything else, too much of something often leads to downfall. The best way to implement keywords onto a website is to standardize it.
For example, if your client has chosen “mechanical watch” and “automatic watch” as the keywords they then you must pick only one to be inserted on a page (see how those keywords lead to two different pages of a website?). For example if you have decided to use “mechanical watch” you should then only use that keyword for the page.
Why? Because when visitors land on the homepage they will able to understand the content easier and won’t be confused. When visitors find it easy to understand what is your website and service about they then will likely to use your service. For retention, that will all depend on how you perform the job.
When inserting keywords, do not stuff within the same paragraph 5 times. A paragraph/section should only have one to three keywords. Per page should have five to ten keywords, this is said to be the best amount of keywords(though, this is still being argued but most settled for that amount).
The keyword should be evenly spread throughout the page. This way you won’t crammed a bunch of keywords in a single paragraph/section. The content will also be easy on visitors’ eyes and minds.
And without the website page annoyingly pops up out of nowhere with every few clicks, the bounce will be lesser. With lesser bounce rates and more session duration rates, Google will start to prioritize and consider the relevancy of the website and it’s content. This however will take time and resources to bear fruits but worth it. Because the result will last for quite some time.
So, No. It is Worth It
So the verdict is; don’t keyword stuffing because it is not that effective and not worth putting your business website on the line just to chase to be ranked at the top of Google’s search result page. Slow and steady combined with the right strategies you will be to climb the rank and get traffic organically. And Digital Zoopedia can help you with just that, head over to our seo page to see how we can help you.
