There’s always something to howl about.

Keyword Jammed Posts are Polluting the “RE.net”

Fair warning — opinionated rant ahead.

Yesterday someone I’m working with on a real estate blog sent me a link, and asked me:

Is this kind of writing – a blog stuffed full of key words – a good thing?

The blog post in question contained 19 references to “YourCity Realtor” or “YourCity State real estate”.

And no, I’m not going to link to the specific blog. My intent isn’t to point out one particular blog, but rather the practice of “keyword stuffing” that I see becoming more prevalent every day.

Reading a 557 word post that contains 19 references to “City real estate” is a painful excrutiating process. I can only assume that writers who do this think they are “doing SEO” on their blog posts.

Google is smart. It doesn’t need to see “Phoenix Realtor” (for example only) nineteen times to figure out your post is about a Phoenix Realtor. Once or twice should suffice. Better yet, write multiple posts with your choice of keywords scattered about.

Maybe the folks who practice this style should step away from the keyboard and and ask themselves this question — Am I writing for the reader, or the search engines?

Search engines don’t buy houses. Yeah yeah, I know — you have to be found in search engines to get readers. But there is something called balance people. You can be #1 in the universe for your chosen search term, but if people get to your site and see an obvious attempt to shove YOUR CITY REALTOR!! in their face over and over and over and over, said people are quite likely to run away screaming. And they won’t be screaming your name or running to the phone.

This particular blog was designed by the Real Estate Tomato team. No I am not here to bash Jim Cronin or the Tomato. For the record, I have a great deal of respect for Jim. He is very open and shares ideas freely. And the Tomato produces some of the most visually stunning blogs on the planet. They also provide extensive training to their clients. I’ve never taken the training, so I can only hope that they aren’t teaching and advocating jamming blogs full of repetitive keywords that render a post practically unreadable.

More annoying to me (by far) than wading through all the keywords is what appears to be going on in the comments section of said blog. I see comment after comment from other bloggers (also running Tomato blogs – coincidence? That’s hard to fathom) who are entering comments with the same keyword in them as the main post. Come on folks. This scheme is so transparent it’s ridiculous. I have 3,629 comments on my blog and don’t recall ever seeing something like:

The Phoenix real estate market is fortunate to have a Phoenix realtor like you Jay!

Good grief. Follow these commenters around and you’ll see them all leaving keyword laden comments on each others blogs. Repeatedly. Surely the folks at the Tomato aren’t suggesting their clients do this? Please say it ain’t so.

If you are considering cramming a post full of keywords please just stop and think about it for a second. Write your post and then sit back and read it. Read it out loud. Does it sound like you? Does it sound like something you’d say to someone sitting right next to you? Or does it sound like you’re trying to manipulate the search engines? Have you read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines? Specifically the “quality guidelines“? They contain these nuggets of wisdom:

Make pages for users, not for search engines.

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Would you really include the same keyword 19 times in one post if the search engines didn’t exist? Would you really ask your friends to stop by and leave keyworded comments if the search engines didn’t exist?