If you are interested in SEO, you are going to know all about keyword stuffing by now. You know that it is bad to overuse keywords on a page or in content, as it is seen as a form of spam and manipulation. In other words, you are going to get on the bad side of Google if you deliberately use too many keywords. While this technique might have worked years ago, it is just no longer acceptable.
However, even though people know keyword stuffing is bad, sometimes they are doing it without even realising. This could be harming your chances of ranking high on Google. Here are some tips to make sure you avoid keyword stuffing when it comes to your website.
Focus on Quality Content
Yes, Google likes keywords. They can help to signal what information is about. But, do you know what Google likes more than keywords? Quality content for its users. So, this needs to be what you are concentrating on the whole.
Focus on writing quality content that your audience are going to enjoy and that is going to be useful for them. Think about the search intent and what is going to work for your website. Then, you can worry about keywords later. Quality should come first. If you want to know the number of keywords you should be using per page in order to help with your ranking, read this blog post from Joshua George. As an SEO expert, he understands how ranking works and goes into detail about keywords. Namely, you can gain better knowledge of what you have to do to create quality content that is also going to be visible on Google.
Choose One Keyword at a Time
One of the first things you should do is keyword research. This is going to highlight what keywords are going to be useful for your website to target. Make sure that they are relevant and the words and phrases you want to appear for. Then, you want to work on targeting those keywords individually.
It is not all about adding as many different keywords to your content as possible. This can result in keyword stuffing, which is going to achieve the exact opposite of what you want. It is going to be a lot easier to work on one keyword at a time. Shape your content around this keyword and this is also going to keep things natural.
Get Help from Online Tools
You can be very aware of keyword stuffing and still have it happen to the content you are creating. Sometimes, you are just not aware of the number of times you are repeating the same words and phrases. But, the good news is that there are online tools that are going to help you avoid this from happening.
For example, you can use Yoast for your SEO. This is going to help you monitor keyword density and it will highlight if it is too high in your content. This is going to allow you to see where you are going wrong and be able to make the necessary changes. There are other handy tools out there and many of them can be free. For instance, there are tools online that will give you other synonyms you can use instead of the chosen keyword.
Increase Your Word Count
If you plan on using keywords in your content, it is best to have a high word count. This is going to help when it comes to keyword density. For example, people can overuse keywords and this is easily done when you have short content. The density is going to be higher. But, if you have more words, this is going to lower the keyword density. This can make sure that you stay on the right side of Google and you do not get penalised for keyword stuffing.
For example, there are some SEO professionals that say you should think about a word density of one or two per cent. So, if you are writing content at around seven words, this means you can use the keyword about seven times in the post if you are aimed for one per cent density. While there is not a set rule for this, it is something to think about when you are writing new content. Again, the aim is to avoid Google penalising you for keyword stuffing and instead, rewarding you with a higher ranking on SERPs.
