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I heard something this week that has gotten me to start informing others the no no's of search engine optimization. Today that is the black hat SEO job of keyword stuffing.
You may ask what is black hat, but if you know the old westerns I think you follow me. Keyword stuffing is the practice of jamming your pages with keywords in a attempt to get better page rankings in the search engines. This may actually improve your page ranking (PR) for a short time, but rest assured that if it does the search engine will catch you. Search engines use crawlers that will determine the keyword density - number of times keyword or keyword phrase is used. If it is to high for the content provided you'll loose that page ranking and drop down or most likely drop all the way out of the search results. Keyword stuffing can occur not only in content but also the title tags, image alt tags, links, and heading. Some website owners even put a block of text in the footer with repeated keywords, others may even use matching font that uses the background color for text color, making it invisible to reader. This is called invisible keyword stuffing and is a no no. What is the proper keyword density for a site? There is no set rule but many will say stay in the 7 - 10 percent range and you should be okay. Some search engines may want less or you may get away with more. This is the search engine optimization game of trial and error. How can you avoid keyword stuffing? One way is through using several different keywords or phrases that are unique to your product or service. If you have done your keyword research, you should have a few groups that you can choose from. Be selective in choosing the keywords, if they actually will not help explain your product or service leave them out before a search engine leaves you out. Search engine optimization is a constant ongoing effort and if you keep it consistent and regular, you'll eventually see an improvement.
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