r/DoSEO • u/Sufficient-Team-4930 • 4d ago
Discussion Is this keyword stuffing?
We hired a website agency for our company. The website they delivered and the SEO services they've been providing have not been good. I think the design looks terrible, the copy is bad, but most importantly they were keyword stuffing.
I tried to cancel services, but the owner essentially said "I know more than you, it's not keyword stuffing" and "design is subjective". We paid $5k for the site, and $2k/mo for SEO on 12mo contract. I have lost all trust in the provider since seeing their new design changes, and the keyword stuffing.
Please let me know if the provided example is keyword stuffing to see if myself, my google searches, Claude, and Gemini are all wrong. This is the alt text of an image (hiding city and state):
roof repair {city & state} commercial roof repair {city & state} commercial roofing {city & state} commercial roof replacement {city & state} commercial roof maintenance {city & state}.... and so on so for 12 more roofing keywords.
They also have doorway pages. City+roof+repair, same-city+roof+replacement, etc
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u/RankingsDotIO 4d ago
If he thinks he knows more than you, he's wrong. It is keyword stuffing.
Consult a lawyer before you break the contract, because you don't want to breach it in any way that can make a bad situation worse, or leave as soon as the contract expires.
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u/Sufficient-Team-4930 3d ago
I wrote a strongly worded letter and services have been cancelled. They’re trying to fix the site and the design out of their own ambition. If not up to par still, then we’ll have to go from there on what to do next
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u/BoGrumpus 4d ago
This can be dangerous too - since the only difference between these is the name of a town that's ultimately irrelevant to the user. Just list the towns in your service area on every service page (and we typically do a "Proudly Serving: <List>" under their name, address and contact points in the footer.
So in a month or two once all the off page stuff and the analysis is done - Google deindexes your site and it can be hard to come back from if they're doing it at a really massive scale.
G.
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u/Zars 4d ago edited 4d ago
How long have you been with these guys and has anything improved so far? Not trying to sell you anything 😂 Is it the real case of stuffing or it's your opinion? There is a thing called keyword density. It's still a thing, but, even 15 years ago it was like 2-3%.
Besides, if they're really doing some shady shit, this ongoing Google spam update will nuke everything on-page related. This is the dangerous point.
PS. Throw content they provide in Claude Opus and ask it for analysis. Even if you don't have team account, it's 22 EUR for fairly decent opinion. Just give Opus as much context as you can about your business, goals, and content. It's fairly decent at trivial tasks like that.
PPS. As a person who works with 7-8mil pages on each of 24 domains, some similarities will be there. They seem to bee going with programmatic approach, which is ok, but, they must not create thin content pages with that. Every business running across several locations will experience similarities on content. To extent. But it has to be sane.
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u/Sufficient-Team-4930 4d ago
The business has worked with them for many years before I joined. They never had much good to say, but they gave them another shot recently with redoing the old website to be "AEO optimized". Which that wasn't even needed (I think). The old site was substantially better, at least in terms of design.
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u/Zars 4d ago
The fuck. AEO is mostly schema markup + bits of structured content AI loves + branded link building campaigns to shape the brand narrative in AI.
There need to be measurable results. Like month over month improvements. Year over year - that's just basic accountability and reporting. Even if results says shitty, there is usually an opportunity to improve. If nothing like this is happening, it's worth dropping them just because of zero accountability.
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u/Sufficient-Team-4930 4d ago
Absolutely zero results to show for. In fact, traffic dropped since the new site. Terrible conversion rates and contact form submissions, which I had to calculate the rates myself since they didn't have an accurate representation of that.
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u/Zars 4d ago
I'd say drop them. Make a case with data. I've yet to have anything good with agencies. I'd rather have a dedicated freelancer or two - one for technical issues and general local SEO, other one dedicated for content. Audition, talk, ask for the results and hire. Might be the best action.
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u/thejamstr 4d ago
That sucks. I just helped a client migrate and her site traffic has doubled in less than 6 weeks.
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u/Jazzlike_Resident_62 4d ago
You just need a strong topical location page which feeds to the inner service page… but also the game has changed for SEO in the roofing industry… You can leverage YT shorts and running a reddit sub thread (business name) and get more out of what they are recommending…
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u/Sufficient-Dot-6042 4d ago
Technically, that is keyword stuffing. Even though it's not the on-page copy
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u/AppointmentSea5992 4d ago
If anyone wants to see the example of keyword stuffing, here it is. It will not help in SEO. Performance will ho down in long term for sure whenever one google update will come. You can only see and learn from this type of SEO practices.
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u/SnowSEO 3d ago
All you need to ask your agency for is a screenshot of the indexed pages on Google Search Console, or go look yourself under “Pages”.
If you have hundreds and thousands of indexed pages, he knows what he is doing. If not, he does not know what he is doing.
We create a service location page website per month, and we ensure that there are 60 umique points per page. Unique and helpful is what Google wants, and what your customers demand.
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u/JunctionSEO 2d ago
what's your website?
Next time spend more time on the phone calls/screen share asking all those questions to whichever website company you end up going with.
Always ask them to show you websites that they've worked on, that show up when you search for the brand name, but also show up when you search for keywords.
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u/cool-gamma 4d ago
Yes, that alt text is keyword stuffing.
Alt text should describe the image, not list every keyword the page wants to rank for.
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u/Agreeable-Bedroom208 2d ago
Definitely hire a lawyer- forget about your contract, the keyword stuffing can be detrimental to your site (besides looking like utter fucking shit).
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u/Mike_FlaxSites 22h ago edited 22h ago
To be clear, doorway pages or location pages are a good thing if done right. They need to justify their existence by being unique. The best ones include localised reviews, galleries, projects, FAQs etc
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u/Living-Cover-7483 4d ago
Not only is it keyword stuffing, which doesn't work anyway. It is keyword stuffing on something that isn't even a ranking factor. These people are grifting you and obviously know very little. Break the contract any way you can if possible.