Keyword stuffing on category pages - eCommerce site
-
Hi there fellow Mozzers.
I work for a wine company, and I have a theory that some of our category pages are not ranking as well as they could, due to keyword stuffing.
The best example is our Champagne category page, which we are trying to rank for the keyword Champagne, currently rank 6ish. However, when I load the page into Moz, it tells me that I might be stuffing, which I am not, BUT my products might be giving both Moz and Google this impression as well.
Our product names for any given Champagne is "Champagne - {name}" and the producer is "Champagne {producer name}. Now, on the category pages we have a list of Champagnes, actually 44 Which means that with the way we display them, with both name of the wine, the name of the producer AND the district. That means we have 132 mentions of the word "Champagne" + the content text that I have written.
I am wondering, how good is Google at identifying that this is in fact not stuffing, but rather functionality that makes for this high density of the keyword? Is there anything I can do? I mean, we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer a bit, not a lot - but it's a question of balance and I would like to hear if anyone has encountered a similar problem, if it is in fact a problem?
-
I have a question!
Did you solve this problem? I saw on your page https://www.theis-vine.dk/vin-fra-frankrig/champagne/ that you continue to have keyword stuffing. It is visible with a single search on the page (see Image 2 attached)!Moz On-Page Grader sees only 22 instead of 32, anyway is it keyword stuffing.
Is it important to me if you fix the problem! And it is important for me to understand if this keyword stuffing really hurt in SEO ranking.
I always fix this problem but now I have a problem with a non-plural keyword.
Thank you! Wait for your feedback.
-
That is great to hear Nikolaj
Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or concerns.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy.
Thank you very much! This confirms my concern!
I'll be looking to implement these changes asap!
-
Hi Nikolaj,
Thank you for sharing the page.
I do see why this might be a concern and if I were doing this, I would change the text at the top first - 11 occurrences in this small text area is far too much and will be seen by Google as such.
Then there are the listings, and this is where it gets a little more tricky because I don't believe you need to remove everything here - but I would do something with each Champagne title. If I take that first bottle as an example:
Champagne - Brut Origine - Halve
There is no need to have Champagne here - go to the page for that bottle and it doesn't say this. It would be much easier to read if you remove Champagne from each of these headings as the word just gets in the way - you already know you are looking at Champagne, so no need to keep putting it.
Then you have:
Fra Champagne Henri Mondi - again, there is no need to have Champagne here because it is just Henri Mondis, not Champagne Henri Mondi.
Do this with each listing and your page will be much healthier, have a lower word count and with that, much less keyword stuffing.
You were absolutely right to check on this.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy.
Thanks for your response! I see that you would like to see the actual page, and I have no problem sharing it.
It's right here: https://www.theis-vine.dk/vin-fra-frankrig/champagne/
I got into a talk with our SEO guy and we kinda disagree about this - I believe it -could- be a problem and he believes it's absolutely NOT a problem.
-
Hi Nikolaj,
... if it is, in fact, a problem?
Well, if you are noticing poor rankings for these pages in Google, then I think the answer to this is yes.
Is it just MOZ telling you that you are stuffing, or have you had a warning or suggestion in Search Console from Google? Or just poorer rankings?
I honestly think I would need to see the page in order to really have a look at what is going on and how it might be perceived, but it sounds like it could be a problem.
... we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer
By the sounds of it, I am not sure this is the case. If people know they are on a page about champagne, then I am not sure that removing this word from so many listing, would, in fact, cause you a problem.
-Andy
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
-
Keyword stuffing in document
Hi, I recieve a grade A on my on page grader, however i get "Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document" - now on my page, i am not sure if its avoidable. It says this is highly important, but here is the issue. My website specialises in a particular product, so we have many variations of that product, different fabrics, styles, trimmings etc, so we have over 50 URLS pertaining to different variations of that "keyword" it's not in a spammy way, its actually done as customers are searching for it that way. Let's say for example scarves. Cotton Scarves, Viscose Scarves, Polyester Scarves, Pom Pom Scarves, etc etc So on my homepage even if i reduce the text mentions of "scarves" the urls still have 50 or so with it as the title, and in the URL. So how do i avoid this form of "keyword Stuffing" ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phoenixcg0 -
Blog page and homepage ranking next to each other for same keyword
Hello, I have my homepage that has been existing for 10 years that is ranked in 18 th position on google for the keyword luxury bike tours. This homepage doesn't have any external link or internal links saying luxury bike tours and nowhere in the title or on the page do I have the word luxury. I only have the words bike and tours. I created a blog page 24 hours ago that has the word luxury, bike and tours in the title and it is ranked in 19 th position just behind my homepage. I am wondering how it can be there and my homepage just be one spot above with all the history and linking it has ? Is it due to the fact that I have the word luxury in the title ? Is it just because my internal linking structure is correct and this blog page is brand new and will my homepage rank higher in the near future but see that I just redid the structure I need to wait a few months ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Ecommerce category pages & improving rankings
Hi Moz 🙂 I work on an ecommerce site & am getting stuck with how to improve rankings on category pages. I have a competitor who writes loads of content for their category pages under tabs & they perform very well. The content isn't particularly helpful, more about their range and what they offer. I have tested adding similar content under a tab to some of our category pages - with some performing well & others not as well. I know this isn't ideal, and I'd like some help with an alternative. Does anyone have tips on improving rankings on category pages? I don't have much control on the layout, this is controlled by our parent company which restricts us. I am researching writing user guides, but these will be on other pages not directly on the category page & the way we have to add them is a lot of manual work for our webmaster, so I can't get them up as quickly as I'd like. I have seen REI have a small bit of content at the top of their pages that link to guides e.g - https://www.rei.com/c/static-and-rescue-ropes But obviously their domain authority is so high already, that they don't need as much help as me 🙂 At the moment I have some new Chair pages I need to rank, these are competitive and any ideas would be great 🙂 Here are some examples: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/ergonomic-office-chairs http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/executive-office-chairs Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Multiple Ecommerce sites, same products
We are a large catalog company with thousands of products across 2 different domains. Google clearly knows that the sites are connected. Both domains are fairly well known brands - thousands of branded searches for each site per month. Roughly half of our products overlap - they appear on both sites. We have a known duplicate content issue - both sites having exactly the same product descriptions, and we are working on it. We've seen that when a product has different content on the 2 sites, frequently, both pages get to page 2 of the SERPs, but that's as far as it goes, despite aggressive white hat link building tactics. 1. Is it possible to get the same product pages on page 1 of the SERPs for both sites? (I think I know the answer...) 2. Should we be canonicalizing (is that a word?) products across the sites? This would get tricky - both sites have roughly the same domain authority, but in different niches. Certain products and keywords naturally rank better on 1 site or the other depending on the niche.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Site migration - 301 or 404 for pages no longer needed?
Hi I am migrating from my old website to a new one on a different, server with a very different domain and url structure. I know it's is best to change as little as possible but I just wasn't able to do that. Many of my pages can be redirected to new urls with similar or the same content. My old site has around 400 pages. Many of these pages/urls are no longer required on the new site - should I 404 these pages or 301 them to the homepage? I have looked through a lot of info online to work this out but cant seem to find a definative answer. Thanks for this!! James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Curran0 -
Optimize Pages for Keywords Prior to Building Links?
Greetings MOZ Community: According to site audit by a reputable SEO firm last November, my commercial real estate web site has a toxic link profile which is very weak (about 58% of links qualified as toxic). The SEO firm suggests than we immediately start pruning the link profile, requesting removal of the toxic links and eventually filing a link disavow file with Google for links that web masters will not agree to remove. While removing toxic links, the SEO firm proposes to simultaneously solicit very high quality links, to try to obtain 7-12 high quality links per month. My question is the following: is it putting the cart before the horse to work on link building without optimizing pages (with Yoast) for specific keywords? I would think that Google considers how each page is optimized for specific terms; which terms are used within the link structure, as well as terms within the meta tags. My site is partially optimized, but optimization has never been done thoroughly. Should the pages of the site be optimized for the top 25-30 terms before link building begins. Or can that be done at a later stage. Note that my link profile is pretty atrocious. My site at the moment is receiving about 1,000 unique visitors a week from organic search. However 70% of the traffic is from terms that are not relevant. The firm that did my audit claims that removal of the toxic links while building some new links is imperative and that optimization for keywords can wait somewhat. Any thoughts?/ Thanks for your assistance. Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Category Pages - Canonical, Robots.txt, Changing Page Attributes
A site has category pages as such: www.domain.com/category.html, www.domain.com/category-page2.html, etc... This is producing duplicate meta descriptions (page titles have page numbers in them so they are not duplicate). Below are the options that we've been thinking about: a. Keep meta descriptions the same except for adding a page number (this would keep internal juice flowing to products that are listed on subsequent pages). All pages have unique product listings. b. Use canonical tags on subsequent pages and point them back to the main category page. c. Robots.txt on subsequent pages. d. ? Options b and c will orphan or french fry some of our product pages. Any help on this would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Troyville0 -
Canonical category pages
A couple of years ago I used to receive a lot of traffic via my category pages but now I don't receive as much, in the past year I've modified the category pages to canonical. I have 15 genres for the category pages, other than the most recent sorting there is no sorting available for the users on the cat pages, a recent image link added can over time drop off to page 2 of the category page, for example mysite.com/cat-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-23. New image link can drop off to page 2. mysite.com/dog-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-53. New image link can drop off to page 2. mysite.com/turtle-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-2. New image link can drop off to page 2. Now on the first page (eg mysite.com/cat-page1.html) I've set this up to rel= canonical = mysite.com/cat-page1.html One thing that I have noticed is the unique popup short description tooltips that I have on the image links only appears in google for the first pages of each category page, it seems to ignore the other pages. In view of this am I right in applying canonical ref or just treating it as normal pages.? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Flapjack0