Please Help- Confusion about how to Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization and Keyword Stuffing

[diplomajim]

I am pretty much a rookie when it comes to the SEO game and to be completely honest SEO is really confusing. I just recently started using MOZ and I was looking at my On-Page report and I saw that I needed to correct some “Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization” errors. So I looked at the error and the fix. Here is what MOZ gave me.

Cannibalizing link

"How to make a fake diploma", "How to get a fake diploma", "Making a Fake High School Diploma", "Fake Diploma Template", and "Framing your fake diploma"

Explanation

It's a best practice in SEO to target each keyword with a single page on your site (sometimes two if you've already achieved high rankings and are seeking a second, indented listing). To prevent engines from potentially seeing a signal that this page is not the intended ranking target and creating additional competition for your page, we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text. Note that using modified versions is sometimes fine (for example, if this page targeted the word 'elephants', using 'baby elephants' in anchor text would be just fine).

Recommendation

Unless there is intent to rank multiple pages for the target keyword, it may be wise to modify the anchor text of this link so it is not an exact match.

This error is for my Hompage(http://www.fake-diploma.com) for the keyword Fake Diploma. My understanding is that for Self-Cannibalization to occur I would have to have a link on this page pointing to another page using "Fake Diploma" as my anchor text since I want this page to rank for Fake Diploma. I do have the right hand sidebar which contains my most recent posts and some of my titles do include Fake Diploma.

How to make a Fake Diploma
                Fake Diploma Template
                Framing your Fake Diploma
To me theses are separate longtail keywords. While they do include Fake Diploma in them I thought theses were fine because they are not an Exact Match to each other nor are they an Exact Match to “Fake Diploma”. Am I wrong about this?

Secondly I reached out on another Forum trying to get a better understanding of this and just got even more confused. I was told that I am also Keyword Stuffing and could be penalized. They said because I have Fake Diploma in most of my article titles that I am Stuffing Fake Diploma. I am in a Niche Market and of course most of my titles include Fake Diploma because that is what my entire site is about. I used the Google Keyword Tool and searched Fake Diploma and it gave me a list of about 79 related keywords like:

Make a Fake Diploma Online
Create a Fake Diploma
Fake Diploma Software

This is just a few of the many that I have. I thought the best way to rank for a keyword was to actually write a post about that Keyword and use it as the title of the article.  I am not over using the Keyword in the actual article and I maybe have a Keyword density of about 2-5%.  I thought Keyword Stuffing was where you actually used the Keyword like 50 times and also just added random Keywords to the article that did not belong.

Please help me with any insights you can offer.  I feel like I am doing all of this completely wrong.

[jesse-landry]

The anchor text you use internally doesn't really hold much weight. If you want to rank for that keyword then just use it as your URL and don't worry about the internal anchor text.

As for the meta description, yes you can keep the keyword in there but keep in mind that has no relevance to Google's positioning of your page. Your META description is simply used to entice the reader. Don't attempt to stuff keywords in there. If they fit in naturally (or by 'accident') then fine. If not forget about it. Just make that description read as awesomely as you can. This is what will convince the potential reader to click on your page so it is vital. (Same thing with Titles which are arguably even more important)

In other words, just market it and get people interested in it first. Forget about the search engines. They'll get interested in it if people get interested in it.

Hope this helps.

[diplomajim]

Jesse,

Thank you for your response.  I hope you don't mind if I ask you a couple more questions.

Lets use the "Framing your Fake Diploma" example.

So I need to change my titles and for this example "How to Frame your Masterpiece" sounds perfect. But I should still use "Framing your Fake Diploma" in the meta description correct?

As far as internal linking goes, when I am writing new content and it is either appropriate or necessary to link to this article I should use "Framing your Fake Diploma" as my anchor text since I want this page to rank for "Framing your Fake Diploma" correct?

[jesse-landry]

5 % keyword density would be a little higher than I'd like, but don't worry too much about these numbers. Honestly just focus on if it reads humanly or not.

In briefly glancing at your site, I gotta admit that the links on the right to the articles seemed stuffed to me and I didn't much love the way it read. I understand that each article is about "fake diplomas" (!! I didn't even know this was a thing, WEIRD!) but there's gotta be a better way to title the articles. It is quite clear what you guys do and not necessary to repeat that in the article's title.  Your domain is fake diploma.com... that does it right there. Call an article "How to Frame Your Masterpiece" or something instead. Make it fun, funny, and spice it up a bit.

Otherwise don't worry too much about this recommendation in Moz Pro. A lot of these things are simply that, recommendations but not necessities. You may skate by just fine without changing a thing. That said, it's probably indicative of a usability issue that needs addressing and I think you might be surprised at the success you can gain by re-wording things a bit differently.

Like I said, don't worry about stuffing your main keyword in each of the titles. Everyone is going to know that you make fake diplomas.

Good luck!