Leather goods manufacturer: mention leather everywhere?

[DocdataCommerce]

This may be a very basic question, but with all this talk about overoptimization I just want to make sure we get this right.

We run a webshop for a manufacturer of leather products. Billfolds, iPhone sleeves, briefcases etc. Their company name (also the domain name at which the webshop is active) does not include 'leather'.

Obviously, leather is an important keyword for these products, but having a category page with 'leather X', 'leather Y', 'leather Z' not only looks weird, it might even look spammy. The same, though to a lesser extent, is true for the category names. Do we really want to have 'leather billfolds', 'leather ipad sleeves' etc. at the top of every category?

Can anyone give some tips, pointers, best practices perhaps for when an important keyword is basically true for every category/product/page of your site? How do you include it without overoptimizing?

[EGOL]

This is a test post... Cheers!

[DocdataCommerce]

There is certainly a need to communicate that the products are made of leather. We want to be found when people search for leather billfolds, and I feel it's only natural that we also communicate this on the website. Especially since not everyone knows the brand, and since leather is not in the company name.

I guess the answer to your question is "nothing", at least when it comes to category names. However, would you go as far as to also use it in product names? This would mean that on a category page, you would see a list of products (18 on each page at the moment), all with leather in the name.

In a recent WBF about over optimization, Cyrus said it seemed that especially the combination of the title tag, URL and incoming anchor text seemed to trigger a decrease in rankings. I'm not too worried about that happening here, I think we can safely optimize both title tags and URL's at least. Now to decide what to do with the rest.

[EGOL]

Do we really want to have 'leather billfolds', 'leather ipad sleeves' etc. at the top of every category?

I am very picky about what goes on my websites.... but it would not bother me very much to see a three column page with headings of "leather this"... "leather that".... "leather something else".    As long as you are using natural language everywhere else on the page.   Since "leather" isn't in your domain name you need to communicate what your product is made of.  I am sure that your client would rather tell the customer that the billfolds are made of leather than have customer assume that it is plastic.

So my response to your question is.....

What is wrong with having 'leather billfolds', 'leather ipad sleeves' etc. at the top of every category?