Stop Writing Keyword Stuffed SEO Articles Already!

by Stuart McHenry April 12, 2013

For over a whole year, web analysts have been claiming that SEO is dead and they could be right. Actually, search engines are smarter and can detect keyword stuffing and many other search engine optimization elements that actually turn on a red flag when they are encountered on a web page. The main problem is that SEO has been overused and abused to get a better page rank without really offering quality content and many times not even including content that could be relevant to the site in question.

Keyword manipulation is responsible for those irrelevant search results that surfers get in return when typing a set of keywords to find what they need. Added to Adwords paid-advertising campaigns to make legit the keywords abuse, many irrelevant websites began to climb above others with quality content and white-hat advertising practices. As a result of all of this, you should start considering moving away from keyword spamming content and start thinking of quality above all else.

 

SEO that Focuses on Search Engines

 

What is making SEO a worthless element to get a website ranking is an approach that SEO gurus gave to it. Search optimization should always focus on improving the surfers experience while improving search engine visibility. However, the so-called SEO experts have focused on developing twisted optimization schemes to get the most from search engines, forgetting that the final consumer of that deformed creature that they construct. The result is that people that land in a supposedly SEO-optimized site finds that its content is incomprehensible to their eyes.  Not to mention just plan-out crap.  We really need to focus on building up readership.  Not just for ourselves but for our clients.

 

SEO Should Aim for Humans

 

Effectively, a keyword stuffed article used to attain its goal; get search engines ranking higher than other sites with poor keyword content. However, the reign of keyword stuffed content is over. Now, if someone wants to make SEO content, they need to keep the human reader in mind first and then search engines. Keywords can still be used for the sole purpose to get search engines knowing what the site is about, but they will no longer be useful to fool search engines in the quest for ranking.

 

Getting Quality Articles Done Now

 

Many webmasters face a new problem, how to get quality articles. To start with, it is necessary to stop worrying about SEO and focusing on the content of an article. If you write your own content, do not repeat over and over the same keywords or those annoying nonsense keyword combinations that make the reading sound weird. Whenever possible, get someone else to read aloud your article and provide feedback. Otherwise, get a qualified writer to do the job, and refrain from asking him or her to keyword stuff the content.

 

Do Not Get Fooled

 

You will still hear that keyword-rich articles are necessary to rank well, but this fact comes from the countless SEO services and keyword-specialized writers that fear to lose their job.  Even though you can still use keywords without abusing them but only if the article makes sense, and it is relevant for the reader based on the topic of your site.

 

Summarizing

 

Rich keyword content is advisable when the keywords are part of natural phrasing that people may use to find a website and that those keywords are not misused or overused with search engine rankings in mind. Keywords that flow naturally into an article are not measured in “keyword density” but are appreciated by human surfers that find on your site the information that they need.  So stop the keyword stuffing it’s 2013 for crying-out-loud… and start writing for an audience.

Stuart McHenry
Stuart McHenry is a US-based SEO Consultant focusing on link building, content marketing, local SEO, and reputation management. Follow Stuart on Twitter @smindsrt

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