Ok people, here is the thing- I am so shocked that some web design/SEO companies still have no clue, whatsoever, about proper SEO. If you pay $20,000 for a web site there is no way in hell (excuse the language) that the “SEO expert” at the web design company cannot be aware that Keywords Stuffing and Meta Tag Stuffing is a bad thing, UNLESS they are not an expert at all!

On May 15-07 I wrote a post called A Typical SEO Mistake and I basically explained that you do not use words in your meta keywords that are not in the copy/content of the web site. I don’t think there is an SEO expert in the world that would disagree with this, unless they haven’t kept up with the changing algorithms, webmaster guidelines, spamming techniques and any of the latest SEO educational material created in the last 2 years. There is ethical SEO and unethical SEO.

Keyword Stuffing

You can keyword stuff two different ways:

Keyword Stuffing can be repeating the use of a word or phrase over and over in an attempt to increase a page’s chance of being indexed for a certain keyword or phrase. Such as:

Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer, Laptop Computer,

Someone may put this on a page (big no-no) and they can also do it in the keywords. DON’T! Oh and by the way, you do not need to put “laptop computer”, “Laptop Computer” and “Laptop Computers”. The capital letters make no difference, so don’t bother, please. It will only come across as spam. Now, you can have “laptop computer” and “computer laptop”- but only once each. You also do not need to put “HP laptop computer”, “Compaq laptop computer”, “Dell laptop computer”, “Alienware laptop computer”…just have your “laptop computer” and HP, Compaq, Dell, Alienware etc. You can keyword stuff by having a long list of words that have nothing at all to do with the site or you can have a long list of keyword phrases for the entire site in the list. Remember I said that you only want to optimize for the keywords on the page.

In case you are not aware, the search engines know what keyword stuffing is and they are looking for it. They examine the density of the words and if something appears to be out of proportion your site is going to have a problem.

Meta Tag Stuffing

You should be creating unique meta tags for each page of your web site. Meta tags can be used to add keywords to a page without resorting to keyword stuffing, but if you are placing words in these tags that are not related to the specific page (you are creating tags for) it is considered meta tag stuffing. The search engines don’t like it (especially Google) and your site can, and most likely will, be penalized for it.

Think of it this way, why wouldn’t the search engines want to give a site with completely ethical SEO strategies a higher placement than a site that is spamming/stuffing hoping to get a high placement? If you site or page appears to be stuffing or spamming the search engines will not want much to do with site or page. If you knew how much money they spend creating algorithms that can identify spam I think you would be shocked!

As I said in A Typical SEO Mistake, you do not add words to your title-tag, meta description or meta keywords that are not used in the copy, anchor text or alt-tags.

Related Articles/Blog Entries:

• Keyword Density- Keyword Stuffing
• What is keyword stuffing? By GoDaddy – If you don’t believe me, maybe you can believe a company as large as GoDaddy!
• Keyword Stuffing
• Optimization, Over-Optimization or SEO Overkill?
• Search Engine Optimization – What not to do