Strange Keywords Google Webmaster Tools
-
Hey, I have a website about "coffee machines". Since a few months I added a vBulletin forum with vbSEO installed. The keywords Google found before I added the forum where highly related to the topic of my website (e.g. "coffee", "machine" etc), which I checked through the webmaster tools.
However, I recently checked again and noticed that Google finds mostly keywords like "post", "forum", "thread", "share" etc. with high significance. Those "keywords" only appear on the forum.
Now I'm a bit worried since Google states "These should reflect the subject matter of your site."
Any advice how to solve that issue?
Thanks!
-
But still it's kinda confusing if Google sees keywords like "digg", "share" etc. as more significant as the actual topic ("coffee"). Also vBulletin is a well known forum software. I checked the vBSEO settings again and here is everything fine as well.
-
With the addition of the forum Google is telling you that you're still a site about "coffee machines" but you're also a "forum" about "coffee machines". Still to reinforce the strength of your core content try linking back to pages on your original site from your forum. Also check for categorization issues in the sitemap and structure of the forum. You can also do goofy stuff like changing a thumbs up system to a "roasted beans" "raw beans" system. Things along those lines.
The main thing is that you're not seeing a reduction in rank like Dejan asked. If you're worried about advertisers missing out on your site being about coffee machines you can address this via the DoubleClick AdPlanner Publisher Center.
-
Most of the posts are already in the index. I also added a sitemap and all posts are accessible by all users. You only have to be a logged in when viewing a user profile or submitting a post. There are only a few 404 errors because of threads which have been deleted. Besided that there are no crawl errors stated.
-
At 1200 posts it should have equalized already. I would check to see that Google can crawl forum content properly - what if it cannot due to technical issue or perhaps need to login to see posts and replies?
-
Hey, I think as the forum fills up with content, these words will be less and less important and as Dejan SEO mentions, these are likely to be noise words and ignored to some extent.
Concentrate on stimulating active, on topic discussion in the forum and you should be okay.
Cheers
Marcus -
The rankings remained the same since then... I just checked Webmaster Tools again and the keyword with the highest significance is "post"... Rreally really strange.
-
Are you seeing any considerable changes in your rankings since forum went live?
-
Hey Dejan, thanks for your reply. I'm thinking the same, but somehow Google doesn't. The forum is quite new but we have around 1200 posts which are all about the same "coffee machine" topic.
I really don't get why Google takes those "keywords" under consideration. The forum is installed under a subfolder "/forum". -
I see what you're saying I would be concerned too. Google is pretty good at figuring out what's a forum and what's main site content and will separate those two for different types of searches (though occasionally blending them). What I am saying is that your normal pages will rank for usual terms and your forum content for different type of search query. One thing strikes me though... is your forum empty? If not, then its topic should reflect the topic of the website - right? So that should not be a problem.
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
-
How many keywords should I optimize a page for?
Hi, There is a lot of debate going on on whether to use a single keyword per page or multiple keywords per page. What I know for sure is that it is not advisable to repeat the same exact keyword in different pages. I need to optimize product pages, categories and pages for an online store and still do not know if it is better to: 1-work with one main keyword per page plus latent semantic keywords, 2-to optimize a page for multiple different keywords (2 to 4 keywords) which are strongly related to the main topic or to the product sold in a particular product page 3- use single keyword for each page (and no more than one keyword per page). Some seo gurus argue this is the best way to get higher ranking for that particular page in the serps. My personal opinion would be 1 or 2, but I would like to hear what you suggest and think about it. Any suggestion or opinion is welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | cinzia090 -
Strange google indexing behaviour
Hi all Looking for a second opinion on a strange issue with has occurred on my site. The site is a magento store and because I am using all the default merchant descriptions at the moment I have noindexed the product pages (there are 300k products, the plan is to rewrite the content as we go, starting with most popular sellers). The Gbot is blocked from the pages and all the products have header tag. We forgot to noindex the popular search terms page on the site and as a result google has indexed some search result pages - we may keep this open, not sure yet, We are seeing a very strange thing in the serps. Google has indexed the search result pages, as mentioned above, however, the description and title tag being used do not belong to that page, they belong to the product page the search result links to. If i do a search in google for the indexed pages i get the categories and lots of, what appears to be, product pages. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:arropa.co.uk/store&espv=2&biw=1536&bih=772&ei=LE5xVd3qA4HlUNnggKgH&start=250&sa=N One would assume that a page listed with the title of Ladies 1 Pair Young Trasparenze Mumbai Animal Print . and the description of Come on, program a little of your crazy side! Part of the edgy, sassy Young Trasparenze Medley, these soft touch, nontransparent stockings function a crazy, (along with the price) would be an entry for that individual product. However, clicking on that product opens up a search results page (very slowly as the site is processing an update still - it is not for public use thus far) which can be seen here http://arropa.co.uk/store/catalogsearch/result/?q=+ladies+1+pair+young+trasparenze+mumbai+animal+print+tights+75+off+military+l+ yes, the search result page is for that particular item but nowhere on the page is the title, description and price, nor has it ever been. Am a little puzzled about this and what it would do re duplicate content as im using the manufacturer data at present. Ideally i would like to keep the search results pages open. Any thoughts would be most welcome. Couple of things to note. Im aware the site is too slow for general public use. It will be fully cached once running, as i say, it has 300k+ products so isn't small. Also, am aware that there are no images. They exist but we are moving the images around, hence being down. Always a fun task when there are 25gb of the things!! Many thanks Carl
On-Page Optimization | | WonkyDog0 -
Does PLA hurt my organic google search.
I have experienced a big drop in my organic trafic to my site. But an increase in my cpc...? Does google punish my site for PLA to get higher revenue?
On-Page Optimization | | Egmont0 -
Why isn't our site being shown on the first page of Google for a query using the exact domain, when its pages are indeed indexed by Google
When I type our domain.com as a query into Google, I only see one of our pages on the homepage, and it's in 4th position. It seems though, that all pages of the site are indexed by google when I type in the query "site:domain.com". There was an issue at the site launch, where the robots.txt file was left active for around two weeks. Would this have been responsible for the fact that another domain ranks #1 when we type in our own domain? It has been around a couple of months now since the site was launched. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | featherseo0 -
Keyword stuffing - is it true?
Hi, I use On-Page Report Card for this url (the web is in Bulgarian) : http://cholakovit.com My keyword is in Bulgarian - "уеб дизайн" (which means "web design". It shows me that my keywords is: " Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 5875 "I cannot find so many instances of this keyword. Only 13 uses for "уеб" and 10 for "дизайн" in the whole page code. Is there an error in the report?When I search the English version -http://cholakovit.com/enwhich is almost the same but translated in English of the page for the key phrase "web design" it shows only "Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 8"
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Software/tool for Content Inventory
Is there any tool out there which can crawl a section of a website (or whole website) and gives a list of urls by subsections? I have tried PowerMapper but it only gives visual map, not a list. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | StickyRiceSEO0 -
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 -
How to get Google images traffic?
How to get Google images traffic? Take a look at traxnyc.com and sugest what we can improve. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0