'Keyword Stuffing' - What should I do?

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   ryankettposted 13 years ago

   It appears that I am what is known as a "keyword stuffer".
   
   I use as many keywords as possible, in the belief that my hub will show up in more searches.
   
   It appears that this could be completely the wrong strategy. Would anybody that knows about this stuff recommend that I start from scratch will all of my keywords?
   
   Just how many tags should I have? and how many other keywords could I perhaps get away with hiding in the article content?
   
   Would be grateful for any responses, or a push into the right hub...

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      fayansposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Hey Ryan
      
      Firstly, too many tags do NOT constitute keyword stuffing. You can have as many as *relevant* tags as possible.
      
      The problem with most people (including myself) is to have too many *exact* keywords in article. A good rule of thumb is to have one at the beginning and ending paragraph. That's pretty much what you need.
      
      In fact, you can do away without it and still rank for your keyword.
      
      Remember, content ISN'T king. Backlink IS.

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         darksideposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Ryan, here's a couple of Wikipedia articles for you to read, I'm surprised that they're not cross-linked in the article or in the "See Also" section of the other wiki page: Keyword Stuffing and Keyword Density
         
         
         
         Not sure where you've heard this, but I've learned Content Is King, Content Is King, Content Is King...

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            ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Ok thanks Darkside, I will check those both out.
            
            Im going to start experimenting with a few of my 'dead' hubs, so as to not risk jeopardising the cash cows. If I see improvement in their performance, then I will roll out changes to my whole portfolio....
            
            Thanks to everybody that has responded.

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            fayansposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            DS,
            
            With all due respect to you, I'm just making a point that you can write the best keyword-rich content in the world but the next crappiest article with more *relevant* backlinks will overtake you in the search ranking. I'm sure you've seen this, haven't you?
            
            Yes, we are schooled to believe that content is king. It is still but without backlinks, the king it powerless.

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               darksideposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               It's kind of like a boxing match with several weight divisions being discussed and picking one to fight another without looking at all the variables:
               
               Good Content vs Crappy Content... Good Content wins. By a knock out.
               
               Good Content vs Crappy Content With Lots Of Backlinks... short term, Crappy Content With Lots Of Backlinks can win. It's a fairly even battle, but long term, I'm banking on Good Content.
               
               Good Content With Lots Of Backlinks vs Crappy Content With Lots Of Backlinks... it's easy to see who's going to win that contest. A knock out in the first round.
               
               Something that shouldn't be overlooked about Good Content is that it can acquire backlinks in an organic manner. In other words, I have quite a few pages, and unfortunately they're not hubs (they're lenses) which are of excellent content and original. I haven't had to post a backlink anywhere. But they've got loads of them. Because the Good Content is useful and unique. People want to link to it in their blogs, in forum posts, forwarding it to family, friends and work colleagues via email. Backlinks come without me ever having to lift a finger. That's the best kind of backlinks you can get. I'd much rather write Good Content that has the ability to do that then spend half my time acquiring backlinks.
               
               Relache's approach to promotion is virtually non-existent. She invests her time in the writing and publishing. It gets indexed (Search Engine traffic is gold) and any other backlinks are from people who are into her stuff as much as she is or who want to learn what she knows. I'd say that she's building a solid foundation for the future, but seeing that has been her modus operandi since she started here then that means her foundation is solid and her future is now.

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                  MontyApolloposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  It's just an interesting game altogether.
                  
                  If you search for asbestos removal at Google, the number 8 position for months has been a "coming soon" page with just one backlink. It's not like asbestos removal is an uncompetitive keyword phrase (60K-70K searches per month).

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                     yoshi97posted 13 years agoin reply to this

                     It links directly out to a page with a PR4 ranking, could that be the helper?

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                        MontyApolloposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                        You got better tools than me - I don't see any outgoing links.
                        
                        asbestosremoval.net just looks silly among the top 10 sites (for 60K searches per month) based upon the tools I used. (Again, no content whatsoever and one backlink).

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                           yoshi97posted 13 years agoin reply to this

                           I use the SEObook navbar and then follow the links.

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            Ghost32posted 13 years agoin reply to this

            I totally agree, Darkside.  A number (not the majority, but more than just a few) of my Hubs rank well in Google  and Yahoo and have been stable in that regard for quite a while...and they don't have backlink one.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Back to the original question...
      
      Google penalizes keyword stuffers.  There is an excellent Hub somewhere that explains why excessive tags have a negative effect.
      
      There was a thread recently where it was suggested that keywords should only be around 2-3% of your content.   I think it was Lrohner who had climbed in Google ranking by actually reducing the keyword density of a Hub.

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   blue dogposted 13 years ago

   your scores and your posts seem to suggest you're doing something right.  i'll stay tuned on this one.

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   ryankettposted 13 years ago

   So maybe I should stick with what I am doing?
   
   I have a couple of articles which are doing really well traffic wise, and they have both been 'keyword stuffed'....

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   Uninvited Writerposted 13 years ago

   As long as your articles still makes sense and the keywords are relevant, I can't see anything wrong with it. Just don't bold every keyword...which I don't think you do anyway

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   ryankettposted 13 years ago

   Ok thats excellent, many thanks.
   
   I am not doing too badly for traffic to be honest, so dont want to fix something which isn't broken...
   
   I make sure that all of my keywords are relevant, and I am on front page for many a few hubs for several different searches.... Most of my tags are slight variations of my other tags anyway, so all relevant.
   
   So I think I will just concentrate on making more hubs.... and yes fayvans..... backlinking is my new emphasis, trying to do a few each day
   
   I currently have my highest ever hubberscore of 98, so wouldnt like to put that into jeopardy.
   
   Cheers guys.

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   NiceBloggerposted 13 years ago

   Interesting,seeing this i checked the source of a hub page and i notice that any hub page has meta description but doesn't have meta keywords so doesn't matters how many tags you choose.Best advices i can give you :
   
   Do a keyword research with google adwords tool,when writing a hub try to add your keyword(s) in the title and first paragraphs. Build links with that keywords as anchor text for a better ranking.
   
   Cheers!

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      yoshi97posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      NiceBlogger is right. The tags on your hubpages are internal links for hubbers ... not external ones.
      
      As for backlinks and such ... here's the honest scoop:
      
      Backlinks *do* get things rolling. The more people that link to you, the higher you go up in the search rankings in Google. *However*, content is king.
      
      Why?
      
      The mystery figure involved in Google's formula is how many page hits you get to your site. The more hits you get, the higher you go up, and sites tend to want to link to great content.
      
      An example is my enV Touch review I wrote. The URL has *nothing* to do with the topic, the title is horrible, and I only backlinked several sites (3 or 4). Still, it's a great performer, which makes one wonder ... why?
      
      A little research I did on Google found a lot of sites linked to my article, all without any of my doing. Traffic came in from these links - and wallah - it bumps slowly up the Google ladder, creating more traffic.
      
      The thing is ... according to modern SEO, my enV Touch site should be a dud ... but it's not.
      
      I wrote this one as an experiment, to see if content was king ... and it is ... but you *do* definitely need the backlinks to get the ball rolling, or else nobody knows you are out there.
      
      
      
      Secret to success:
      
      Write a great article others will be interested in reading
      
      Create some backlinks to let others know it's out there
      
      Wait for them to come
      
      
      
      And why is content king? Because if someone likes your article, they just might link to your article ... providing more traffic.

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   NiceBloggerposted 13 years ago

   Double posting,sorry, but I've noticed something. Content is the king when you already worked on links.A good content can die easy without the links.I am sure that if you search for something in Google's first page will appear some crappy websites while on page 23 could be a really great article.
   I did see experienced this with my own blog,posts that I've worked hard to do research are getting lower traffic than posts I've promoted and did link building for them.
   
   Quality of any content is different for any person but a strong backlink is the same for anyone

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   NiceBloggerposted 13 years ago

   
   
   
   Yoshi it's not about how many links,it's about who is linking to and how.
   For example if you have a news site and CNN will link to your article using as anchor text phrase "Secret to success" you will rank much better in google for this search,if they link to your article using anchor text "click here" is not that great.
   
   So what matters the most is to get links with your keywords as anchor,the relevancy of the link and the quality of the site that is linking to you.Sometimes just an link can do wonders

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      yoshi97posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Quite true NiceBlogger ... and the best way to get the better sites to link to you is to have quality material.
      
      Also ... on organic links ... these are the true goldmine. While you can go to hundreds of sites and create backlinks manually, this is time away from writing ... and time is money.
      
      The choice is there ... Create one so-so website then go on to manually create several thousand backlinks, or create 10 very informative sites, create a few backlinks, then hope to be picked up with links from bigger sites as it's discovered.
      
      Organic links are always a boost, as they create links while you write the next money-maker, but sadly, you really need to create the content that makes them go 'wow' to get those organic links, and that's not always an easy thing to do.
      
      If you want a real world analog ...
      
      You're now a sportswriter. You write articles for a living and get paid by how many people read your article. (not exactly correct, but it fits for this analog).
      
      Now, you can write a so-so article and run around to many news medias convincing them to publish it (heavy backlinking), or you could write a great article and convince a few to publish it (light backlinking) and hope other media gain interest in the article and decide to publish it as well.
      
      It's a roll of the dice, but for those who can write well the money is in organic links, as it lends more time to writing. Whereas, someone who struggles with words might be best to backlink heavily, hoping the need to click ads will outweigh the need to yawn and move on to another page ...
      
      Many people wrongly equate success with page hits ... Clicks pay the bills, and clicks never come from a page that gets closed immediately. The trick is to get the reader interested enough to view your article, then hope one of your ads catches their attention and garners their vote (a click).
      
      So to speak ... I'd rather have 100 page views a day and 50 clicks than 1,000,000 page views a day and 5 clicks, as my own self vanity won't pay the bills.
      
      DS knows his stuff ... good content + backlinks wins the fight
      
      Also know that Hubpages is a bit different than most sites, as the tags on Hubpages *do not* equate to actual meta keywords. As such, the only keywords you have is your content so you need to write your article in such a way that Google can establish the fact that you are writing about a particular topic and that it gets weighed properly for that topic.
      
      For example ... create a hub about zero interest credit cards (a high payer on Adsense, by the way), stuff in a bunch of keywords that are related, then write about Casper the Ghost instead. See how far it goes ... even with thousands of quality backlinks.
      
      Again ... it's not about getting the clicks (though that helps get things started) it's about creating content that will attract the reader long enough to stay on the page and possibly click one of your ads.
      
      If you can't keep the average reader's attention on your article for at least a few minutes, then they are never given a chance to click on an ad and the page will fail. That would be why I say content is King ... and backlinks should be seen as the Queen - almost as important, but not worth giving your life and forgetting the need to create more content.

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   fayansposted 13 years ago

   Interesting experiment, Yoshi! And you're NOT wrong!
   
   DS, I agree with you that good contents + backlinks wins the fight any day. You and I know...
   
   But newbies need to understand that writing good content alone isn't enough.
   
   Oftentimes, they strive to be the next darkside, relache, yoshi, or Mark (you guys are awesome writers) and attempt to write the next masterpiece with disregard for the need for backlinks.
   
   And guess what? It takes them months to reach the first payout - if ever.
   
   Sure organic links are the best but they are slow to come *nowadays* and that's the problem. It may take months to pluck the fruits of their labor but with backlinks, the whole process is put on steroid.
   
   Besides, when a hub is too good with all the answers, there is no reason for others to click the ads anymore.
   
   I know it's just me - at least that's what I've always been taught and that's what has always worked for me - after my initial struggle.
   
   Others may disagree, though.

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    NiceBloggerposted 13 years ago

    We could generally talk hours on this subject,you made a very good point when you said that is not about getting clicks,it's about gaining visitor trust and transforming him into a regular reader.I am a webmaster for years so I am aware of any kinds of ads and probably there are not many people who aren't but still.I rarely click on ads or use referral links but i do when the content is good and valuable.
    
    You said that HubPages doesn't have meta keywords and you need to optimize your hub which is not so easy for a newbie,it's true but HP has a big advantage,it's a well established authority site and from what I've seen(i could be wrong)Google love more HubPages than other sites like this,Squidoo for example.
    
    Very good points,have a great one!

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    Rebecca E.posted 13 years ago

    keywords are important, but so is content, as people who like will backlink,

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    GeneralHowitzerposted 13 years ago

    i'm going back to read this forum im in a hurry/.

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