The phrase “SEO content” can be interpreted as an insult. It recalls a series of poor writing choices that result in content that no human (or bot) wants to consume.
You know nasty SEO content when you see it: boring, formulaic, keyword-laden content that could fit almost any industry, business, or keyword topic. This type of content written solely for search engine optimization (SEO) reflects poorly on your brand and can hurt your organic search performance. It bears repeating: the days of crappy SEO content boosting organic search rankings are long gone.
Google, in particular, feels so strongly that unsavory SEO content hurts the user experience that it has released a series of Useful Content Updates (HCUs) to promote sites that create “useful, trustworthy, and user-focused content people” written for humans instead of robots. Starting in 2022, performance decreases during periodic HCUs that identified sites with content usability issues. As of this month, however, the HCU has been included in Google’s March 2024 core update, never again sending individual signals to alert sites that have a specific problem with useful content. Instead, you’ll have to guess which system within the Core Update was responsible for your decreased performance.
Still, you should know when your content is meant solely to play with search engines, even without the help of an HCU to reduce performance. If you’re not sure, gauge your content against these nine signs you’re writing SEO-crazy content.
If your content is resorting to one or two of these tactics, you might be fine, but crappy SEO content tends to tick all nine boxes.
1. Writing Formula
If you can replace any business topic or keyword in your copy, chances are it’s formulaic SEO copy. For example, this construct is common with sites that display SEO-obnoxious content:
Do you need a keyword? We have keywords for sale. Whether you need a high-quality keyword or keyword, or you’re looking for a keyword, a keyword, or a keyword, you’ll find a wide selection of keywords in Company Name.
Templates like this allow SEO professionals to insert keywords in a grammatically correct plan that doesn’t actually communicate any value. In addition to being mind-numbing, formulaic writing is easily identifiable as unhelpful content.
2. Keyword stuffing
Perhaps the oldest form of organic search spam, keyword stuffing is the practice of forcing so many keywords into content that it reads poorly. For example, the copy below is full of the keyword “teddies”.
We have branded and high quality stuffed animals, stuffed animals and other stuffed toys. We are proud to offer some of the best stuffed animal names. We offer thousands of different styles of stuffed animals, from traditional teddy bears to more unusual stuffed animals such as stuffed platypus and stuffed gemsbok. All the stuffed animals we sell meet or exceed US safety standards.
While there is no ideal ratio of keywords to non-keywords in a piece of content, the five instances of the keyword squashed into the 62-word paragraph above are clearly full of keywords.
If you’re using a formula, chances are you’re also using keywords. Copy packed with too many keywords is easy to spot, which means Google’s algorithms can easily demote it.
3. Overuse of minute keyword variants
Keyword research is important to understanding the breadth and depth of a keyword topic. But using every keyword in the book on the same page of copy is just another form of keyword stuffing. Especially when all the variants include the same main keyword nugget, putting all your long-tail keywords in one copy starts to read poorly.
For example, “teddies for sale”, “best stuffed animals”, “high quality stuffed animals” and “bride stuffed animals” share the same main keyword of “teddies”. Using varied and interesting language generally improves your content, yes. But using tiny variations of the same keyword doesn’t make for stronger content, it just repeats the same phrase over and over.
4. Awkward grammar to fit keywords
Grammar proofreading is important, and Google can detect poor grammar algorithmically, especially when combined with keyword stuffing. Don’t use awkward language to accommodate an exact match keyword just because a large number of people typed it into the Google search box. Some keywords need to be massaged to play well with the rest of the sentence. For example, “on sale” keywords in e-commerce content can lead to some awkward constructions:
As a grower of potted plants for retail sale, our company carefully controls the climate, watering and fertilization of our potted plants.
Search engines have been smart enough to recognize synonyms for many years. Google will understand the relevance of your content even if you don’t use the exact match keyword as long as you provide the right context and use other grammatically correct keywords.
5. Lazy Word Choices
Think of each keyword as a hole in the Swiss cheese of your content. If you mentally eliminate keywords and the remaining words are not interesting and varied, you may be writing SEO-unfriendly content. Human language is a wonderful and varied landscape of words that describe every imaginable concept. Avoid using vanilla word options. Just keep your digital thesaurus handy as you type to identify juicier synonyms, especially for verbs and adjectives.
6. Passive voice
The laziest of word choices, the passive voice enters a sentence when the subject is acted upon rather than doing an action in itself. We all learned this in elementary school: active language engages the reader and communicates more forcefully. Not all sentences can be active, but if most of them are passive, your writing will feel more awkward.
7. Top list
Lists can be useful tools for communicating the breadth of a topic and are not inherently spammy. In fact, bulleted or numbered lists that give a little more meat to each list item can be quite attractive. However, when combined with keyword stuffing, over-reliance on listing is another indicator of bad SEO content. For example, these lists that are in the same paragraph are intended to find closely related keyword variants rather than communicating any real meaning:
We are committed to providing every school, church, organization and business with high quality, aesthetically pleasing and high quality commercial furniture. We offer a wide selection of chairs, tables, bar stools, booths, counters and more.
8. Excessive linking
Whether they’re styled as blue underlined link text or not, excessive linking is a shame and can detract from the reader’s experience. There’s no ideal link-to-text ratio, but if it looks like a long blue blob, it’s probably a keyword-stuffed link list. The right links should benefit the visitor by offering to take them to a valuable and related page. Excessive linking occurs when SEO professionals feel the need to link to everything.
9. Excessive use of headings
When a piece of content contains a high header-to-content ratio, it’s probably SEO-unfriendly content. And no, there is no ideal ratio. But when each heading only has two or three sentences below it, when there are more than necessary, and when the headings are full of exact match keywords, it’s likely spam.
This is an easily identifiable SEO tactic: you’re literally boosting your spam with big, bold letters. When used correctly, headings should act as landmarks within the copy you’re writing, introducing new topics or important points. You should have enough to say about this topic to warrant a heading, or else the content will feel sparse and headings will detract from the overall flow of the piece.
These nine tips will help you recognize when you’re writing crappy SEO content. If you do, read up on how to produce high-quality, useful, people-centric content. Today it’s important to represent your brand well, satisfy your visitors and stay on the good side of Google’s useful content system. It will also become increasingly important as Google works to uncover more hidden gems from the depths of the Internet and rolls out the generative search experience, now in beta.
