Calling all SEO experts: is my agency giving me bad advice?

Hey everyone,

I'm new to this subreddit so sorry if this question has been answered a million times.

I recently started working as a content manager at an investment startup and my understanding of SEO is pretty basic. We're working with an SEO agency to implement a content marketing strategy. They are well-respected and have many success stories and all that jazz fusion.

The thing is, for every page we're working on they give us these massive lists of keywords that MUST be used OR ELSE...

For example, for a blog post about options trading the list goes like this:

options trading for beginners / how to trade options / options trading for dummies / options trading strategy for beginners / what is options trading / trading options 101 / + 10 more of exactly the same phrase written differently.

Then they also give a list of LSIs like stocks, buying, investment and all that, all of which have to be inserted and which I have no issue with.

But I have an issue with putting in exactly the same phrase 10 times written differently just because people are searching for it. Stuffing it all in feels like, well, keyword stuffing. Or is that how SEO still works these days and I'm just a noob?

I've read a bunch of articles on keywords in blog posts and all of them seem to say the same thing: search engines have changed, optimize for your main keyword and write for humans, not robots, don't obsess over keywords etc. etc.

But every time I bring this up with them they say this space is very competitive surely thou must all the keywords inserteth otherwise thou shalt surely die. When I communicate this with my CMO he says he sees no problem and also this agency knows what they're doing.

I understand how this can work for a post called Best Times to Post of Instagram where you can have H2s like "Best Times to Post of Instagram on Sunday" "Best Times to Post of Instagram if you're in Finland" but not when I'm trying to write meaningful, interesting content that talks to real people.

So to stuff or not to stuff?

Would love to hear your thoughts and would greatly appreciate if you could recommend some current resources or videos that talk about this specific issue.

Thanks!

P.S. I'm not a robot

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