When Keywords Can Hurt Your Website Ranking
Discovering the after-effects of keyword stuffing and how to prevent them
Keywords are vital elements in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
The right amount of keywords can make your writing excellent, both for readers and search engines.
However, jotting down too many keywords and making them repetitive on your page is another case.
Keyword stuffing is a term to define if a post has too many keywords that make the reading experience awful.
Worse, if you keep keyword stuffing on your posts, negative consequences await within sight.
The After Effects of Keyword Stuffing
The major search engine, Google, doesn’t clearly state how it will give penalties for sites that perform keyword stuffing.
However, many believe that jamming too many keywords in a single post will affect the site’s performance.
Here are some after-effects of keyword stuffing that many believe:
High bounce rates
Overstating keywords on a page will make it hard for readers to find the information they’re looking for.
Instead, they read unnatural sentences with repetitive words that make the experience painful.
Rather than keep scrolling, visitors will most likely leave your page immediately, resulting in high bounce rates.
Fail to generate loyal visitors
Visitors will be less likely to return once they experience an undelightful time on a page.
They’ll find other sites with better writings that are more comfortable to read.
Invisible on search engines
Worse of all, search engines won’t crawl and rank your site properly because of keyword stuffing.
Google has been improving its capability to recognize keyword faults.
Sites that perform keyword stuffing will most likely rank poorly on search engines, especially Google.
What is the Optimal Number of Keywords for SEO Purposes?
The ideal number for keywords in a blog post is still debatable.
But a factor to consider is the length of your post.
A post with fewer word counts needs fewer keywords than a lengthy blog post.
However, generally, readers and search engines generally prefer a keyword density of around two to five percent.
To calculate a page’s keyword density, you can divide the total number of words on your page by the number of times a keyword appears on it.
For instance, on a 1000-word page, a keyword appears ten times, resulting in 1% keyword density.
Many experts recommend using up to two keywords for every 100 words of text.
If you follow the rule, you’ll get about 1–2% keyword density.
Even in longer pieces, the best practice is to limit yourself to at most 20 keyword uses per webpage.
What Should You Do?
You can consider keyword variations to avoid keyword stuffing on your page.
Keyword variations refer to words and phrases related to your primary keyword but are different.
By preventing keyword stuffing, you have the chance to rank your page higher on SERPs.
Moreover, you can use online tools to find out about your page keyword density.
Manually calculating total word and keyword counts across all pages on your website can be time- and resource-consuming, especially for longer copies.
So, using a keyword density tool can be an effective solution to save you many hours.
If you’re looking for recommendations, Keyword Density Checker and SEOBook Keyword Density Analyzer can be great options.
You can also find many more options on the market that offer free and paid services to check your page keyword density.
Knowing the effects of keyword stuffing is essential for digital writers or marketers.
Without the right keyword strategy, all your efforts in improving your site’s online presence can go in vain.
Consider keeping an ideal number of keywords on your page to have good readability both for audiences and search engines.
You can constantly improve your copy by adding more valuable content and keyword variations to prevent keyword stuffing.
Related: How Can Video Content Help Your SEO?
