Slug No, not that kind of slug! The kind of slug I'm talking about is what WordPress calls a post URL. Lin of "Telling It Like It Is" recently requested an article explaining what keyword stuffing is, but I'm going a little deeper and talking about stuffing slugs, titles and content with keywords. Since I'm not an expert on search engine optimization, I'll point you to a few good places to read about the techniques.

Keyword Stuffing in the Content

Officer Cutts Badge If you read Google's page on keyword stuffing, you'll find that keyword stuffing in a bad way will get you into serious search engine trouble. What's the bad way? I don't have a good example of my own, but Matt Cutts posted a great example, "SEO tip: Avoid keyword stuffing", in July of 2007.

You can still stuff keywords and key phrases in the content of a post, but it has to be appropriate and contextual. While there isn't any kind of measuring stick for the number of times you can use them, you can be assured that if it looks spammy, it probably is. You can surround them with "strong" tags (the Googlebot likes it), but making them bold shouldn't detract from readability. I'm no expert, but I've achieved good results for many of my articles.

Keyword Stuffing In Slugs and Titles

Michael Gray recently wrote a great article on optimizing WordPress page titles, post titles and page slugs, but I'd previously read Chris Lodge's advice on how to use the power of the slug to increase search engine traffic. Michael's article was a bit more in-depth.

Brian Clark (not Bryan Clark) asked, "Do Keywords in Post Titles Really Matter?", as part of his series on "Magnetic Headlines" and explained why they do. This is another good article to take your time in reading.

All of these articles tell you how to stuff keywords in slugs and titles, but they don't tell you not to overstuff them. I've actually seen overstuffed slugs and titles, usually on spam and scraper blogs. How long can a URL be? I don't remember the limitation, but it's pretty long and longer than most humans will ever need. The same applies to strings used for titles. Will you get penalized for using irrelevant or repetitive keywords in the slug or title? I don't know, but why take the chance?

Update: See Shorten Your Blog Post URLs So You Don’t Look Spammy to Google for the answer from Matt Cutts.

Conclusion

Like I said before, I'm no expert on search engine optimization, but it seems to me that repeating relevant keywords and key phrases in all 3 places (the slug, the title and the content but not within the slug and within the title) is the easiest way to make your posts rise in the search engines. If the rankings for certain keyword combinations of my personal guide to proper post titles are indicators, I'd say it works extremely well. Check this out:

  • Number 1 for "personal guide proper post titles", "guide proper post titles", "personal post titles", proper post titles"
  • Number 2 for "personal guide proper", "guide post titles"
  • Number 5 for "proper titles"
  • Number 6 for "proper post"

I didn't check any more than those. The results sufficiently prove my point. Stuffing slugs, titles and content with keywords works, but only if it's done the right way and if there isn't too much competition.

(Slug image source: Calling all slug stories at OregonLive.com. Badge image source: Paid Links - The Solution at TwentySteps. Okay, so the badge is about paid links, but it's about the same guy and I like it, so there!)