Can Your Site Get Penalized For Keyword Stuffing On An 'Untarged' Keyword?
-
My site has dropped since the EMD/Panda 20 roll out and I am looking for reasons why.
I am looking at Keyword Stuffing as one potential problem.
My web site is on the topic of WordPress Security with that being the main keyword I want to target.
Now I can limit the number of occurrences of 'wordpress security' to below the recommended 15, but it is impossible to do this for 'wordpress' without severely compromising the user experience.
I've got other content on topics such as WordPress Backup and WordPress Security Plugins etc, so obviously the word 'wordpress' is bound to appear frequently.
Is there a risk that Google will penalize me for Keyword Stuffing on 'wordpress' and thus pull down the site or page for other keywords?
Or would it simply mean I won't be able to rank for 'wordpress' (which I am quite happy about)?
Thanks!
-
Excellent suggestions - thanks!
-
Hi Anders,
I think Ruth made some great points in her comments above. I read over your content and several things occur to me. If this were my project, I may consider reorganizing some of the information on the home page.
Further below in the page, you have some items that appear to be FAQ(ish). You might find an opportunity to move some of this content into another page, but create a call to action (anchored text links) to them. This helps you gain traffic deeper into your site content, so the home page asks the question, which do well. The links draw them further into the site and engages them to convert (download).
Also, I'm seeing the alt image tag text report the use of "The WordPress Security Checklist" several times. I would consider using this term once versus the three occurrences.
The strengths that you have is the keyword term in the URL, which is a huge benefit. Ruth's comments on using WP versus wordpress is insightful, because it bolsters the URL. I would scale back to find a bit more balance and you'll get there. You can always scale back up, as you see fit.
Also, here is a flag to consider:
Multiple meta description tags found!
I'm sure others may have more specific input, but this is what I would consider adjusting. The joy of SEO is research, implement, test, and modify...
Best of Luck,
andrew
-
OK, when I run the On Page Optimization tool on the competitors site it only shows 16 occurrences of the term 'wordpress security'.
The remaining occurrences appeared in a twitter widget, which I guess is loaded in an iframe or by javascript or something like that...
There were 34 occurrences of the word 'wordpress' on the competitor site.
-
Yup, makes sense now. And try not to focus too much on an actual percentage when it comes to keyword frequency. Google never set a standard; that is just some experienced SEO's best educated estimation.
-
Someone on the Google Webmaster forum also suggested the 'read out loud' test.
I like it, and did go through the text with fresh eyes. I managed to make some good changes and build in some more variation.
I think I might just be too focused on the limit of 15...
-
Sorry for being unclear... was worried that if Google was going to penalize me for overusing 'wordpress' I'd suffer for the word 'wordpress security' too...
Does that make sense?
-
If you're suffering from Panda, another thing to look at is how much content you have overall. If you've got a small amount of text and it has high recurrence of keywords, that's a bad sign for Panda. A tip I like to use when it comes to keyword stuffing is to read your text out loud. If it sounds unnatural, you're probably using the keyword too often. I would focus on creating some new quality content and on making your language sound natural.
If you feel like you're saying Wordpress too much but it's negatively impacting your site, you could use "WP" or other variations to add some variety.
-
The first thing that came to my mind is that you may not be intending to target this specific word, but because it's stuffed throughout the page, Google may think you're targeting it.
I'm also confused as to what the issue is if you're afraid Google will think you're keyword stuffing and won't rank you for ''Wordpress'' but you say that you actually don't want to rank for that anyway.
I'm just going to go with the standard best practice here and say to write the article for your users, not Google. Write it the way you would if Google did not exist. Google's algorithms are smarter than you think, and penalization of quality content that is intended for user experience is not something that generally happens.
-
Would you mind providing a site link? It would be helpful to see an example.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content?
Hello Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content? Example: For a full selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages, please click here. OR Example: Please click the following link for a selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages. This is my product page to help you better understand the context: LikeChimp
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Changing site title
I'm wondering what the procedure and implications are of changing my sites tile? I realise that my Having my keyword in my sites title whilst chasing the same keyword in articles may be causing over optimization. The slug also takes on the article title too, in effect giving me the keyword three times before I've even written my article. Example below. Imaginary site title : soap benefits.org Article: The essential guide to making homemade soap Slug: The-essential-guide-to-making-homemade-soap As you can see, soap has now been mentioned three times, not including excerpt/meta description or image alt tags. As most of the article titles would contain my supposed keyword "soap" I'm thinking the best option would be to change site title with allinoneseo (that possible?) and change the slug to something relevant, giving me more room to escape over optimization. Does this sound sensible? I don't have that many articles so if I had to change other things it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. It seems a pity to loose my sites title I picked, but if I end up writing hundreds of articles this would be a problem. Help appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | marangus0 -
SEO and multilanguage site
Hi all! I have used a wordpress plugin called WPML which translates a webpage into another language so that I have a webpage in two different languages (spanish (main market) and english). I'm just doing the seo for the spanish market and I'm gonna start with the seo for the english one. Should I do it just the same as I had a one-single-language page? just with english keywords, etc. I guessit would only differ in the way I do the linkbuilding strategy as the markets are different Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Can Cascading DropDown HELP improve site architucture?
Our online stores is selling furnace filters. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com We have 4 different qualities furnace filters and each of them are avaible in almost 50 different sizes. My store is setup with almost 200 different products. ( 4 filtres X 50 sizes) None of them have variable. I'm looking for a solution to help customers to find there furnace filter size fast and easy on our HOME page. I find this cascading dropdown option http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/CascadingDropDown/CascadingDropDown.aspx where I wiil setup 3 options to select: filter width filter lenght filter depth Will it be the best options? Now my store is setup with categories and it is not the best solution. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com This was a lots of work to create 200 different products. The reason I did this is because when searching in search engine, vistors will use such keywords: 16x20x4 filter 20x25x2 furnace filter a/c filter 10x20x1 replacement filter online 20x20x1 16x25x5 filter toronto and so on... Must keywords request in search engine will included the furnace filter size. Thank you for your help, BigBlaze
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050 -
How is my on-site SEO looking like?
I know this is a broad question. My site's content has been written more than one year ago and haven't been changed so far. Our main goal is to make the application hosted in the site work better every day, so we don't worry much about writing content. The URL is http://www.onlinelogomaker.com
On-Page Optimization | | rpedri0 -
Keyword confusion
Thanks for taking the time to read through this. I'm currently optimizing a website and have a few structural questions: How should one view targeting keywords with respect to the home page of any given site? EG -> If the home page has the preferred keywords at the beginning of title and the page follows most if not all the recommendations from SEOMOZ tools, why are sub pages outranking my root domain for the set of keywords I'm after? When sub pages use my homepage keyword as the 2nd keyword in its respective title, does that give the overall homepage more power for the keyword it's after? EG. Homepage Title "ABC DEF - DEF ABC - XYZ | Company name I'm targeting "ABC DEF" for the home page Subpage title -> "DEF ABC - ABC DEF - XYZ | Company Name. The sub page keyword is "DEF ABC"
On-Page Optimization | | FPK0 -
Articles on our own site?
Hi Guy's Is it better to have articles on our own website under a news section, with keyword phrases that point to relevant pages or is it better to post them on our blog (that is seperate, we use blogger) and point them to relevant pages on our site? or maybe a bit of both? Thanks Daniel
On-Page Optimization | | LushDuck0
