Keyword stuffing- What exactly does that mean? Plus, why you should aim to avoid it
Written by: Ryan Walsh
Date: 22/07/2025
Introduction
Okay, we get it. We’re in 2025, and we are writing an article about keyword stuffing!
Many agency owners across the country will be shouting, ‘Get with the times!’
Keyword stuffing is no longer a viable tactic, nor does it offer any benefits to a business.
So, why are we writing a rather wordy article on this subject?
Well, the answer is simple. It’s still prevalent; businesses still incorrectly use this method of optimisation.
Web designers, in particular, who lack a strong understanding of how to implement white-hat search engine optimisation still often use this method.
Cramming keywords into titles, main paragraphs, and home pages excessively using the same repetitive terms in text- its sure-fire way of receiving a Google penalty.
Therefore, upon reading the text back, the author of the work will often sound like a broken record, constantly repeating and stating the keywords they want the business to rank higher for on Google.
And so this is why we thought it would be a good idea to write an article generating more awareness of the damage keyword stuffing can do, as it can damage your SEO before your business has even got out of the starting blocks.
New websites
Your website might be brand-new, you’ve just paid the web designers, and you’re eager to see where it ranks on Google in the first week.
However, all businesses will rank low on Google to start off with, that’s because their websites are brand new.
With that said, businesses that use keyword stuffing often wont appear anywhere near page 1 of Google, they may not even get indexed.
That’s because when Googlebot first crawls and indexes your website, this is a time for your business to show off why you are the best.
How do you differentiate yourself from your direct competitors?
How products or services are superior.
However, if Googlebot detects that spammy, black-hat SEO methods have been used from the outset, the website may not even get indexed.
It might not even appear within Google’s results at all.
Not even on page 10 or beyond!
Outdated and no longer works.
For those who have been implementing SEO for a long time, they will know that through successive rollouts of various Google updates (Google Penguin and Google Panda updates), many SEO techniques are now obsolete.
Spam link building is dead, duplicated content marketing will damage your SEO and don’t even think about using cloaking methods.
Meaning that spam links simply do not work, using cloaking doesn’t work, and using keyword stuffing as a way to improve a business’s ranking for specific keywords, well, that most definitely doesn’t work.
Benefit of the doubt
We must say, based on our vast experience as one of the country’s leading SEO agencies, that businesses that use outdated, obsolete methods of search engine optimisation often get lulled into a false sense of security.
Often, they use keyword stuffing for quite a while, and notice that there’s no penalty applied.
Perhaps, sometimes, even seeing some keywords improving a little in terms of their positioned within Google’s search engine results pages.
However, this is where the false sense of security comes into play, because a business can receive an algorithmic penalty out of the blue.
Sometimes, a business might even receive a manual Google penalty.
Therefore, what happens here is a bit like scales; Google seems to allow some margin for error.
However, it is clear as day that the business is using keyword stuffing excessively, this can result in a Google Penalty, such as the Google
Panda penalty being applied.
What is keyword stuffing?
Can you tell us exactly what keyword stuffing is? What is the exact definition?
Google has a massive index, within that index are a businesses’ pages and blog posts. These are ranked according to the strength of the businesses’ ranking factors.
A business’s page is ranked according to the strength of its ranking factors.
This means Google will rank the page according to the quality of the content marketing.
For example, Google’s algorithms will ask:
– How helpful is that content marketing to the shopper?
– Does the page demonstrate a good Google E-EAT score?
– Is the page authoritative? For example, does it have a high number of high-quality links leading to it?
– How well written is the content marketing?
– Is the author for example clearly an expert on what they are writing about?
– How high is the dwell time?
– How low is the bounce rate?
How well written is the content marketing?
For a page, or a blog post, to rank high on Google, it needs to be well-written.
It needs to be helpful to the customer (Google Helpful Content Update).
Yet if a page is crammed with keywords, and it doesn’t offer helpful advice; instead, it just keeps mentioning the exact keywords over and over again, like a broken record. Then this work is likely to have a super high bounce rate.
This leads us nicely to our next point, which is the user experience.
If a website offers a good user experience (U.X), through publishing helpful content marketing, and use of effective web design, it can mean that the page ranks much higher on Google.
Why is keyword stuffing bad?
Keyword stuffing is detrimental to your SEO, but it’s also annoying for the shopper having to read the work.
When someone has a question about a product or service, they want a high-quality answer.
This allows them to find the right pages so that they can make an informed buying decision, determining which product or service is best for them.
However, on the other hand, if the page is full of stuffed keywords and keywords that have been unnaturally inserted into sentences, the shopper is likely to become frustrated because the information, well it wont make sense.
Therefore, the bounce rate is likely to be very high indeed; therefore, this will be picked up by Google.
Google has AI built into the algorithm itself. This AI uses Google RankBrain, where the pages are reshuffled according to whether those pages have high dwell times, for example.
A page where keyword stuffing has been used is likely to have a high bounce rate; therefore, it can start to move down Google’s organic ranks, that’s because of this sustained high bounce rate.
Google Helpful Content Update
This update was first rolled out in September 2023. It was a really important Google update because it rewarded businesses that focused on writing helpful content marketing. Businesses that solely focused on where their website ranked, i.e.just focused on the SEO, more than offering helpful information those pages/blog posts, often moved down Google’s ranks.
Therefore, businesses that focused on offering helpful advice and well-written content rose in Google’s rankings. Many SEO agencies speculate whether this is due to UX factors, such as dwell times and bounce rates, and whether Google has given these factors more importance.
How can we avoid keyword stuffing?
As this article illustrates, keyword stuffing can damage a business’s search engine optimisation.
Therefore, here are some of the ways that you can avoid keyword stuffing at your business:
Quality content marketing
This is probably the most overused description in SEO today: businesses should write “quality content marketing”.
However, this is more true today than it ever has been. That’s because of the Google Helpful Content Update as well as Google E-EAT.
What is Google E-EAT?
Google uses over 200 various ranking factors to determine where your business should rank.
However, Google also uses Google E-EAT; this stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Now, if your content marketing clearly shows that it’s been written by an expert, an expert who knows a lot about that product or service they are writing about, then that page will rank higher.
Google therefore rewards helpful, well written work.
The content marketing also needs a high enough word count that answers the question in an in-depth manner.
Additionally, aim to answer related questions, as the shopper is likely to spend longer on that page, thereby increasing dwell times.
Additionally, other businesses may link to your work, as any reputable SEO company will tell you. If your business has strong backlinks, links from firms with high DA scores, your business will start to move up Google’s rankings.
Just write naturally
It’s essential to write your business’s content marketing in a natural tone. This means writing the text as if you were talking directly to a customer standing in front of you.
If you believe the text reads unnaturally, for example, when you proofread the work, you spot that a keyword appears too regularly, then you may want to rephrase those sentences.
Again, write the text as if you’re talking to a customer who’s standing in front of you.
Good on-page SEO
Page title
We would write a page title, if it’s a blog post, similar to how a customer would ask a question.
Then, this should prompt you to start writing content marketing using an FAQ style of writing.
This allows shoppers to easily skip to the section they want to read more about, and it also helps Googlebot understand what the page is about.
Let’s give you a quick example: if you’re writing about e-bikes, the page title might be, ‘What’s the best e-bike to buy in 2025?’
Then you could split the content marketing into an FAQ style, whereby the questions being asked are, for example, “which e-bike offers the best range?”- this would allow the shopper to skip to the part of the text that they want to read. This could improve dwell times and reduce bounce rates.
H1-H6
This leads on from the previous point, in that we would write most content marketing in the style of an FAQ.
We would use the H1-H6 tags to highlight the page titles, which allows the reader to skip to the section they want to read.
However, what it also does is send a clear message to Googlebot about what that page is about.
For example, all the H1-H6 tags are related to bikes; it’s clear to Googlebot and Google’s algorithm that the page is about bikes.
Alt text
Many marketing companies believe that, because of AI, Google knows exactly what a picture shows, such as a specific hyper car. Google’s algorithms are clever enough to recognise what a picture depicts.
However, it is SEO best practice to add some alt text. For those who are not familiar, alt text is just a short description of the picture. If the picture, therefore, shows a Noble sports car, then add that alt text to the picture.
Again, it explains to Google what that picture shows, and gives greater clarity to Google as to what that page is about.
Meta description
You know when you’re shopping around to purchase an item, you often skim-read the lines of text that appear on Google’s search engine results pages, which describe what that page is about?
That is the meta description, the two lines of text that neatly summarise what the page is about.
Therefore, this helps improve the business’s CTR, that is, click-through rate.
For example, if you say that you deliver items the next day for free and write this directly in the meta description, it can help improve your company’s CTR.
Just be better
Googlebot is the bot that crawls and indexes the web; however, it indexes hundreds of thousands of pages every day.
From businesses touting the benefits of their holiday destinations to why you should purchase a specific smartphone.
Therefore, what makes your content marketing stand out?
Why should it rank on page one of Google?
Is the page that you have just written, is it better than your direct competitors pages, which are ranked on page one currently?
Well, using keyword stuffing, as this article explains, means that your business is unlikely to appear on page one of Google if you use this method of SEO.
However, suppose you focus on being better than the competition, offering more accurate information, and providing higher-quality advice.
In that case, your business stands a much better chance of appearing on page one of Google.
Therefore, avoid outdated SEO methods, such as keyword stuffing, as they are ineffective.
Instead, utilise the knowledge, the wealth of product and service knowledge that you have within your business.
Use this knowledge, and write helpful and valuable content marketing. This will be helpful to your customers because you have offered invaluable advice, which could be enough for them to purchase from you.
Even if they don’t purchase from you, they may spend a considerable amount of time reading the article, which can reduce bounce rates.
In summary:
Businesses that overly focus on using black hat methods to cheat Google’s algorithms often find that these methods do not work.
They often lead to Google penalties.
The reason is that a page that is keyword-stuffed is not helpful; it’s not useful to the shopper.
Google wants to offer a quality answer to a customer; it doesn’t, therefore, want to offer a poorly written page, which might annoy the shopper because it wastes their time reading it.
Therefore, always focus on quality. Focus on implementing quality content marketing.
Who are Walsh & Partners?
We are a highly established and respected SEO agency that’s based right in the city centre of Cardiff.
We are truly one of the best at what we do. We can improve your organic traffic, increase your sales, and deliver high-quality, white-hat work.