Can Keyword-Stuffing on a Single Page Penalize My Entire Site?
-
Hi forum! I want to improve my internal linking through adding keyword-rich anchor text to my search results pages (my site has an internal search engine for products).
For example, if I were a shoes store, my product search engine results are currently:
-Running
-Hiking
-Walking
-Trackand I want to make them actual keyword-terms by changing them to:
-Running Shoes
-Hiking Shoes
-Walking Shoes
-Track ShoesThis creates a problem - the keyword "shoes" is stuffed on the page.
I don't care how well these dynamic search results pages appear in search, only the actual product pages. Is it okay to keyword stuff on these pages, or would it penalize my entire site?
-
Nice article on 'Money Keyword' Anchor text.
All of our search results links' anchor text is unique and we have over 60,000 of these pages. I am pretty sure they will be diversified enough. They are all somewhat specific, so I am pretty certain they will not match exactly what the user searches for in Google most of the time.
Another question that has come up.
For example, 2 of my pages are competing in google: A product page ranking 4th, and a dynamic search results page ranking 5th.Would no-indexing the search results page make the product page shoot up higher than 4, or is the purpose of removing competition just to guide the user more specifically where I want them?
As long as I use the the noindex tag in a robots.txt file correctly, do I have your blessing? Thanks so much!
-
OK, that's different from what I was getting from your original post (which is why it never hurts to double check). I understood it as you wanted improve your internal linking and do anchor text to help your INTERNAL search results w/in your on-site search function/search engine.
Keep in mind that too perfect anchor text can actually hurt you, too: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172839/Google-Penguin-Update-Impact-of-Anchor-Text-Diversity-Link-Relevancy
Creating dynamic product pages will compete with your regular product pages in rankings for those shared keywords unless you no index them (not the same thing as no follow). No index means that Google can follow the link but shouldn't index it but you want page rank to be passed along to links.
I'd consider reading up on the subject of no index to confirm your comfort level with how to do this - especially since I'm trying to interpret what you want and I may not be correct and don't want to possibly hinder your goals
http://www.seoboy.com/the-differences-between-noindex-nofollow-and-robotstxt-file/
-
Hmm. Well, our main goal in the anchor text changes is to give a boost to our product pages rankings. We currently don't see very good results from either, so I am not sure if they are competing.
To rephrase my second question, if a page is not indexed in Google (probably via a tag), does link anchor text on that page have any merit?
-
Not ranking in Google won't touch what results you can serve up within your own site; as you mentioned you have your own internal search function/search engine and that's why you wanted to create this in the first place.
Also, not having them indexed in Google means they won't compete w/ your regular product pages for rankings in Google. Of course, this is assuming that I understood your goal correctly.
-
If I block my search results pages from being indexed by Google, will these new anchor text changes have any effect?
-
I absolutely agree with Andrea here and recommend blocking Google from indexing your search result pages.
-
I've had it happen to me, so it's a matter of if you want to take the risk in the first place and wait it out and hope you like the outcome.
-
I wouldn't worry about these pages being indexed. Google should automatically pick up on the URL parameters as they do with all my ecommerce clients. There are occasions where certain parameters have to be removed manually through webmaster tools, but Google is getting pretty good at deciphering this stuff on their own
-
Wanting to use long tail keywords is not really the same thing as keyword stuffing. You're just using anchor text to highlight the long tail keywords ("hiking shoes") that best describe your product vs. stuffing a page to an un-natural level with just the word "shoe" in an obvious attempt to rank for the term.
So I wouldn't fear stuffing penalties, although...depending on how crawl-able your new search page results will be, then be prepared that it can change what page ranks for what keywords unless you use a robots.txt or something to block/control search engines from accessing it. Ex: dynamic pages competing against the actual product pages for rankings for the long tail keywords.
And that's not the same thing as a penalty, that's just possibly what can happen when you make changes to content.
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
-
Site naming - longer tail with keyword or short but off-term - does it matter?
So, we've established that the actual domain name is not a big ranking factor for google. However your chosen domain & site name will feature in your content so I'm figuring it does matter indirectly. Eg given a choice between: bobsfidgetspinners.com, welcome to "bobs fidget spinners", we sell fidget spinners.... or spinnersfidget.com, welcome to "spinners fidget", we sell fidget spinners I'm going on the assumption that the former is better because it introduces more on-term content (as well as nicer branding). For the limit content that talks about your brand name anyway. Is this a correct assumption? Would it make any difference if the rest of the site content was on-topic (and good, obviously)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HSDOnline0 -
Adding a secondary keyword or other keyword variation to the title tag affect ranking for primary keyword?
Hi Moz Community, According to Google Search Console, the main keyword for our website is undergoing a low click through rate, even though we have good ranking for that keyword (top 3). Currently, our homepage's title tag is "Brand Name: Primary Keyword". I am thinking about adding a secondary keyword or other keyword variation to differentiate our company from others in order to possibly increase the click through rate. Will this affect the current ranking for the primary keyword? Also, is the clickthrough data in Google Search Console accurate? Thank you! Best, Raymond
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raymondlii0 -
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Weird Page switch for a keyword in Google Rankings
Over this past weekend Google switched the page which usually showed in search results for keyword benchmarking. It went from from http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking to http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking-portal/osb. Also on Google the Rankings for the keyword 'benchmarking' sank from 15 to 47 for http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking Just looking for some theories or ideas or anyone that has had this happen to them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
OSE link report showing links to 404 pages on my site
I did a link analysis on this site mormonwiki.com. And many of the pages shown to be linked to were pages like these http://www.mormonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Planning_a_trip_to_Rome_By_using_Movie_theatre_-_Your_five_Fun_Shows2052752 There happens to be thousands of them and these pages actually no longer exist but the links to them obviously still do. I am planning to proceed by disavowing these links to the pages that don't exist. Does anyone see any reason to not do this, or that doing this would be unnecessary? Another issue is that Google is not really crawling this site, in WMT they are reporting to have not crawled a single URL on the site. Does anyone think the above issue would have something to do with this? And/or would you have any insight on how to remedy it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThridHour0 -
Splash/Warning Pages at front of site
We are looking at working on a site that needs a warning for users visiting - This splash/warning page is the only just google sees this not performing well in search engine - The sites are Wordpress sites - Would we use script to force a full screen pop up? This would be needed on a visit but if the user leaves and returns to the site the warning would need to reappear. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Is there some tool or person that can review my site and tell me what to improve on?
I'm using the SEO on page tool from this site but I get no help on how to fix the problem. I'm looking for the all in 1 tool that tells me everything about my site (description, keyword density, what to improve, what to add, what to remove, etc). If someone would be kind enough to review it for me, that would be great !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 6786486312640 -
Am I keyword stuffing my titles?
I run a site where I answer questions. As I answer each question I choose a title for the page. I have been trying to get good keywords in my titles, but now I am wondering if I have been keyword stuffing them and perhaps I should be more succinct. So, let's say I had a question about a sore back. Here would be the title tag I would use: Why is my back sore? I have spinal pain and need relief and help. | My Main Keyword That's a fictitious example, but the idea is that I would be trying to get the keywords "back", "sore", "spinal", "pain", "relief" "help" and my main website keyword into the title. As I'm writing this I'm seeing the folly in this. I think it would likely be much better to simply have a title of Why is my back sore? So, I have three questions: 1. Is it better to have a succinct title targeting one keyword/keyword phrase than to get lots of keywords in my title? 2. Should I be putting my main keyword after each of my title? Shortly after doing this on 1700+ pages I was #1 for my main keyword. But, I was also doing other things as well to boost my presence for this keyword. 3. If I decide to do more succinct titles, how would you suggest I go about running a test to see which is better? Looking forward to your responses! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0