Is "fluff" SEO-content still important in 2025?

[TurboCharge]

I'm talking the old "What is a loan?", "How do you get a loan?" type of content where the goal is to stuff as much keywords and LSI as naturally possible for the hope of ranking? GPT tells me it's necessary for Google to determine authority, but is it really? I see a lot of old website with well-written SEO content struggling, and a bunch of new websites with generic fluff making it. What is the point of this when users don't read it anyway, GPT can generate it on a whim, and it tells Google absolutely nothing about the website except a bad UX?

I changed strategies from generating SEO-fluff to generating "unique research" where we only post unique data, based on our own research, present in a SEO-friendly way. For example, instead of writing 500 words about what impacts pricing of a product, we now calculate the price directly and answer the query with a number.

The content is much better and I bet it's much better for SEO. But did our rank improve? Not at all. Struggling more than before. Our content is better than the competitors and yet we are performing way worse. Thus the question: is SEO fluff still necessary for SEO? Should we bulk generate a bunch of keyword rich garbage? Does that work still in 2025?

 

[Juicify_digital]

Hello! Google is trying to combat low-quality SEO content, but in practice, empty articles filled with keywords still work, especially when backed by strong "link mass". Perhaps the reason your new approach hasn’t yielded results yet is that Google is slow to evaluate unique data and also considers the volume and frequency of publications. If your site isn’t listed among authoritative sources, the algorithms may struggle to trust your research. Additionally, internal linking and content structure also play a key role.

You wrote that your ranking hasn’t improved. Could you clarify how much time has passed?

 

[Beklink]

Yes, it works, however, nowadays you need to be careful not to stuff as many keywords you can and lose the meaning of the article because the time spent on page by your viewers is now a really important factor to rank on Google. If people come to your page and all they see is lot of meaningless content, they will close your page in 10 seconds. Use your keywords naturally only where it makes sense

 

[TurboCharge]

Hello! Google is trying to combat low-quality SEO content, but in practice, empty articles filled with keywords still work, especially when backed by strong "link mass". Perhaps the reason your new approach hasn’t yielded results yet is that Google is slow to evaluate unique data and also considers the volume and frequency of publications. If your site isn’t listed among authoritative sources, the algorithms may struggle to trust your research. Additionally, internal linking and content structure also play a key role.

You wrote that your ranking hasn’t improved. Could you clarify how much time has passed?

We made the change last August/September, 2024. We decided to remove all fluff we had built since May of that same year and that crushed our site from $2k traffic value to $100 (the fluff we built since May replaced older, traditional fluff). Since September, we removed things like "What is a X? How do X work? What are the pros and cons of X?" The content was horrible and purely GPT generated, but generated at scale. It was a bad version of Wikipedia, but still highly informative, only not that valuable. We removed it all and replaced it with content that directly addressed user queries based on original research and with data to back it up. So "What is a loan?" was replaced with "What does a loan cost?", where we directly answer with "A loan costs X% - Y% in rate depending on lender. This means that if you loan $X amount for Y years, the loan will cost you $Z per month or $A in total. Look below for details," and we include charts and data below. This is objectively perfect content in terms of SEO. Maybe it's not authoritative, but it offers more value to users.

We replaced "How does a loan work?" with "Secure your loan with insurance, here are 5 lenders that meet your needs," followed with detailed information about their offers.

Giving examples here, but illustrating the difference in value.

We made these changes in the fall of last year, and we have not recovered to our past high. We've climbed from $100 to $200 in traffic value, but we are still nowhere near our previous highs, back when the content was old, generic and informational fluff.

 

[tiiberius]

Thing is the "fluff" was probably completing overall topic of the website. Making it more coherent.

Answer to "what impacts pricing of a product" would not be a calculation but indeed a more "fluffy" article.

Now that got broken.

 

[TurboCharge]

Thing is the "fluff" was probably completing overall topic of the website. Making it more coherent.

Answer to "what impacts pricing of a product" would not be a calculation but indeed a more "fluffy" article.

Now that got broken.

But the amount of people that search for the impact compared to the price differ a lot. When you search for the cost of an insurance, you don't wonder what impacts the price, you wonder the cost. We went from outsourcing the content to unprofessional third-parties, to generating fluff with GPT, to directly answering the query with actual pricing and data, yet it's been a gradual decline which doesn't make sense.

 

[debbyodo]

I'm talking the old "What is a loan?", "How do you get a loan?" type of content where the goal is to stuff as much keywords and LSI as naturally possible for the hope of ranking? GPT tells me it's necessary for Google to determine authority, but is it really? I see a lot of old website with well-written SEO content struggling, and a bunch of new websites with generic fluff making it. What is the point of this when users don't read it anyway, GPT can generate it on a whim, and it tells Google absolutely nothing about the website except a bad UX?

I changed strategies from generating SEO-fluff to generating "unique research" where we only post unique data, based on our own research, present in a SEO-friendly way. For example, instead of writing 500 words about what impacts pricing of a product, we now calculate the price directly and answer the query with a number.

The content is much better and I bet it's much better for SEO. But did our rank improve? Not at all. Struggling more than before. Our content is better than the competitors and yet we are performing way worse. Thus the question: is SEO fluff still necessary for SEO? Should we bulk generate a bunch of keyword rich garbage? Does that work still in 2025?

Instead of stuffing keywords, why dont you get ai to write quality content for you using good prompts. Getting good prompts dont take anything more than searching on google and doing good research.

 

[TurboCharge]

Instead of stuffing keywords, why dont you get ai to write quality content for you using good prompts. Getting good prompts dont take anything more than searching on google and doing good research.

I'm just baffled as to what is "good content". I'm currently generating FAQs that complement our unique content. I'm back to generating "What is X?" content "for topical authority". I'm getting good, informative content, but I don't understand why this is necessary.

 

[hideath]

Fluff content is useless and unecessary nowadays for sure, it's not how it works anymore,
It's been the case since Google started relying on UX signals more than the actual website/page content,

So, let's assume your page have 10K "useless" content added, while most of the users bounce back right after a few seconds, that won't work,
If other pages showing in the SERPs have better UX signals, where users spend more time navigating, browsing more pages, etc... that will work,

The thing is, longer content is not always considered as "fluff", if it could somehow get the users' attention (or some of them), it could be more helpful,
For your example, if the content mentioned is catchy, keeping them on page, and possibly directing users to other pages, that's the best approach,

So, ideally, you want to include the main content at first, serving the user request and matching its intent, followed by possible "catchy" content,
If your competitors are only including the "main" content, so are you, but you can have better UX signals by keeping users navigating longer, more pages,

For your specific case, even tho that content "quality" couldn't be the main problem, non-original content could still be considered as spam,
You want some well crafted and original content that serves the user search intent and get good UX signals mainly, that what you should focus on

 

[OnlineProxy]

Is becoming less effective in 2025 as Google prioritises quality, expertise, and user intent. While keyword optimisation is still important, Google's algorithms now focus on finding such pages and penalise them. I would advise you to make pages with quality relevant content and use keywords sparingly.

 

[UrbanSnake]

People don't have time to read bullshit, most readers are already lazy, if you put too much useless content, they will just go back to the search page or search on TikTok to have a direct answer

 

[TurboCharge]

I'm asking Gemini over and over and it seems to value SEO bullshit fluff still. Boggles my mind. It is preferring website structures with intent at top and SEO fluff at the bottom. I'm asking it to compare screenshots of various websites and it constantly picks the website with "most content", ie. text. The more "in-depth" the website, the "better its SEO" it says. "In-depth" being keywords in H2 and nonsense in the text.

 

[tompots]

I'm talking the old "What is a loan?", "How do you get a loan?" type of content where the goal is to stuff as much keywords and LSI as naturally possible for the hope of ranking? GPT tells me it's necessary for Google to determine authority, but is it really? I see a lot of old website with well-written SEO content struggling, and a bunch of new websites with generic fluff making it. What is the point of this when users don't read it anyway, GPT can generate it on a whim, and it tells Google absolutely nothing about the website except a bad UX?

I changed strategies from generating SEO-fluff to generating "unique research" where we only post unique data, based on our own research, present in a SEO-friendly way. For example, instead of writing 500 words about what impacts pricing of a product, we now calculate the price directly and answer the query with a number.

The content is much better and I bet it's much better for SEO. But did our rank improve? Not at all. Struggling more than before. Our content is better than the competitors and yet we are performing way worse. Thus the question: is SEO fluff still necessary for SEO? Should we bulk generate a bunch of keyword rich garbage? Does that work still in 2025?

SEO still wins in 2025, not because it’s good, but because Google loves volume.
Unique research is the future, but for now? A little fluff might still be the game.

 

[TurboCharge]

Testing fluff strategy as of this thread. Got a lot of my pages done. I want to say I'm seeing a positive impact but it is marginal so far. AI told me the issue holding me back could be lack of authority in this vein and the issue is site-wide so if it indeed is authority, it will likely take another update for the changes to reflect in the site-wide authority.

 

[ghostreach]

Keyword stuffing and optimizing for crawlers is 2fold. If you overdo it with fluff or drop keywords incorrectly, you’re asking for a penalty on both Bing and Google. But if you know what you’re doing, especially on Bing, proper stuffing and even hidden elements can shift your page’s keyword relevancy hard and push you into top spots when combined with CTR manipulation. On Google you gotta play it a little smarter, but you can still work in context carefully and get away with more than most people think.

 

[Rukhsar110]

SEO seems to be in a weird place. Well-researched content struggles, while keyword-stuffed fluff still ranks. I shifted to unique, data-driven insights instead of generic SEO content, but rankings dropped instead of improving.
It feels like Google still favors sheer content volume and topical authority over real value. Maybe a mix of bulk SEO content and genuinely useful data is the way to go.

 

[TurboCharge]

Keyword stuffing and optimizing for crawlers is 2fold. If you overdo it with fluff or drop keywords incorrectly, you’re asking for a penalty on both Bing and Google. But if you know what you’re doing, especially on Bing, proper stuffing and even hidden elements can shift your page’s keyword relevancy hard and push you into top spots when combined with CTR manipulation. On Google you gotta play it a little smarter, but you can still work in context carefully and get away with more than most people think.

I've struggled with this website for many years. There's simply something about it that's holding it back. As I've "improved its content with unique research and data", it's actually declined. Currently, it is ranking worse than ever before. The big things I did before the last two drops were:

1. Remove previous, outsourced fluff and replace it with GPT fluff: Drop.
2. Remove previous GPT fluff and replace it with NLP-written and SEO-optimized unique research and data: Drop.

Currently, I'm complementing the unique research and data with new fluff. According to Gemini or GPT, I don't remember, the page needs to contain context for Google, even if the users don't read it. The fluff is used by Google to determine authority, "so include it".

Since making this thread – I've updated most of my pages. I'll finish the remaining ones tomorrow. Since making this thread, some pages have actually climbed a bit in rank. I've seen increases from like position 13 to 9.

I've also added a lot of snippet-worthy content which has given the website snippets for some queries. But the website's overall rank remains stagnant. Will finish the last pages tomorrow and then abandon this site honestly. The next update will show what Google thinks about fluff.

 

[Jave]

Hows your backlink profile looking tho? It's clean? Maybe that's what's holding the site down at the moment and not your content

 

[TurboCharge]

Hows your backlink profile looking tho? It's clean? Maybe that's what's holding the site down at the moment and not your content

I have some (15%) "dirty links" in it, but between 2021-2023 I tried disavowing. The websites with those links also link to other websites of mine and those websitesare doing just fine. One was ranking at the top for a very high competition niche. By late 2023, I deleted the disavow file entirely. I saw no change at all. The website was and is still struggling.

Besides those 15%, 85% are very good links. I've paid a lot for links over the years. The websites DA is 60.

 

[iglow]

disavow bad links and let it crawl