Content Marketing
How to Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Learning how to avoid keyword stuffing is one of the best things you can do for your content. Discover strategies and tools to avoid keyword stuffing.
Learning how to avoid keyword stuffing is one of the best things you can do for your content marketing efforts. Why? Well, neither search engines nor readers like it!
So, to get your writing ranking well on the search engine results pages (SERPs) or to connect with your audience, it’s important to balance optimization with creating people-first content.
Learn about the risks of keyword stuffing and get strategies on how to steer clear of it.
Keyword stuffing occurs when you try to pack your text full of keywords to get it to rank well on SERPs. Sure, it worked back in the day, but after a series of algorithm updates, Google no longer falls for this black hat technique.
However, what if you’re accidentally repeating the same words throughout your content? Does that change things?
Unfortunately, no. Whether it’s a mistake or not, you’ll still face the following risks:
To avoid stuffing your content like a turkey, here are some strategies you can try to create more rankable, user-friendly content.
One of the best ways to avoid repetitive keyword use is to keep a close eye on the keyword density of your text. This metric tells you how frequently target words appear in a piece of content, making it the perfect keyword-stuffing checker.
There’s no perfect keyword density to aim for, according to Ahrefs. However, Ahrefs does note that if the content has a keyword density of 2% or higher, then you should take a second look at the article for ways to potentially improve readability.
To review keyword density, you can manually go through your text to calculate it, or, to save time, use a readability checker with a keyword density feature.
Ideal keyword density can vary by niche and competition level. So, what better way to strike the perfect balance of keywords than by seeing what works for the competition?
By performing keyword density checks between a piece of content and the top-ranking pages on Google, you can also compare your text to the competition to find how often you should use certain keywords.
Example: If you find that the word “keyword stuffing checker” has a 1% density on a top-ranking page, you can aim for that in your content to try and achieve similar ranking results.
Now, calculating keyword density can be a lot of work. This is where a content optimizer comes in handy. Throw in your primary key phrase, the URL or text, and up to 10 URLs from the competition, and you’ll receive a color-coded table that lets you know how frequently you should use keywords to compete on the SERPs.
To avoid repeating the same word throughout a text, try to use similar ones instead.
Synonyms, secondary keywords, and long-tail phrases give more context to search engines. They can also serve as evidence that you’re writing useful, relevant, high-quality content for users, not rankings. So, it’s worth adding the extra time to your keyword research efforts.
Besides, these variations can help you naturally incorporate related topics into blog posts and articles. It’s an opportunity to increase your word count, which can make maintaining a good keyword density easier. The more words and variations you have, the more chances you have to spread them throughout your content.
Your target key phrases shouldn’t just be in the content itself — for good SEO, they should be in your page elements as well. When you place them strategically in text and metadata fields, search engines take it as a strong sign that you’re covering the topic thoroughly and effectively.
So, if they’re relevant and it sounds natural, make sure to sprinkle — not stuff — keywords into the:
Finally, one of the most important ways to avoid keyword stuffing is to create content for people, not search engines. At the end of the day, Google’s core ranking systems aim to bring people helpful content, and a string of keywords isn’t helping anyone.
Google has an excellent guide on creating people-first content that you can use to assess your articles. But really, if your goal is to create high-quality content with a conversational tone and a natural flow of keywords that fulfills your audience’s search intent, then you’re on the right track.
Striking the right balance of keywords in text can take some work, but it’s worth it! By avoiding keyword stuffing, you’ll have a much better chance of making readers and search engines happy with your content.
Besides, you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. Keyword stuffing checkers like Originality.ai’s readability tool and content optimizer make detecting and analyzing keyword densities quick and easy. This leaves you time to perform keyword research into synonyms, secondary, and long-tail keywords and then incorporate them strategically into your on-page SEO elements.
Ultimately, writing people-first content is your best defense against keyword stuffing. When you focus on writing for readers and not algorithms, you’re more likely to create the kind of useful content that everyone is looking for.
