Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What Constitutes Keyword Stuffing?
-
Greeting MOZ Community:
I have been attempting to add certain keywords phrases to the home page text of our real estate web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). When I check the keyword density and look at the keyword cloud, the frequency of certain terms appear substantially higher than they should be (see attached keyword cloud and keyword density chart. Certain terms like "office space" have a 5 or 6% frequency which seems high. Last thing we need is a Panda penalty.
When I viewed the code for the home page (see enclosed), I noticed HREF tags, SRE tags and ALT tags repeating certain keyword phrases, driving up their density.
I have attached a keyword cloud for the home page of a competitor and the use of language seems more diverse.
Does Google take the text in these various tags into account? I know the ALT tag is important for SEO, but how about the others?
Does the use of text in the tags for this page make the overall page look spammy?
Also, there are text and tags for the carousel in the home page that appear in the code for the home page. If this code were somehow concealed, would we be better off from an SEO perspective?
Thanks, Alan
-
Hi Sheena:
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. Previously I worked with an SEO firm that had prepared a keyword matrix. So we tried to integrate those terms and perhaps have gone over board.
What do you mean by making the home page text more "brand and user" focused? We tried to eliminate promotional type add copy and cliche type language like "best", "great" etcetera. Tried to focus the content on why users would be in the real estate market for office space (search scenarios).
Do you think that approach is too remote and academic?
THANKS, Alan
-
Hope my answer helps you. I am still kind of a beginner. Other professionals, feel free to correct my answer.
Here's what I think. There is no exact definition on number of times you should use a keyword. But if you look at the language, lot of times you can tell it is keyword stuffing. Think about it this way. With semantic search, knowledge graph, contextual meanings, schema markups, Search engines have become really smart to know what content relates to what. By over using the keyword, you are actually failing to provide meaning to your content. There are other details that go with it, such as what do people usually click on when they search for "office space in NY" etc, what do other people link to etc.
The language should be conversational. Using the word office space multiple times is actually taking away the opportunity to mention other things. It could be something like square feet details, paint colors, lease time etc.
Google has clearly said that Google is for users, not webmasters, or websites. Why do you think they made the whole meta keywords irrelevant?
I am probably trying to confirm your doubt that yes you are most likely keyword stuffing. Also, you are making it more obvious by making the texts bold. Google would more likely find something else that provides more value.
It is definitely able to read the alt tags, as you know, and other tags. Alt tags is usually for crawlers, and other screen reader software to decipher what the image is about. I would probably stick to alt texts not more than a sentence.
It is also able to read href's, and the anchor text it contains. Nobody exactly knows how exactly Google functions, but from experience, I want to say, href is definitely a part of their ranking algorithm. The URL structure matters too. For example, www.example.com/ny-office-space.htm will make more sense then a randomly generated url that is something like, www.example.com/123456-space.htm
I would probably try to think differently about content. Having a diverse language is probably more beneficial, as far as it is relevant, and it is even more beneficial if you go above and beyond. For example if your topic focus is "apples", it is good to talk about apples, but it would be better if you talk about history of apples, different kinds of apples etc.
I would think about having a diverse language in terms of how it would benefit users, or people who search on the web. I would probably not think about having a diverse language just because you can rank. Obviously that is the goal, but Having that thought process might actually hinder your ability to provide good valuable content. If your content is good, Google will definitely rank. Not sure if everyone will agree to this.
Also, I would probably do something like how hard it is to rank for "Office space", and that in NY. sometimes also because of high competition, you might need to up your game even more. Moz, has a "Keyword difficulty tool" which can help you determine that.
You can also in your webmaster tools see how Googlbot reads, or fetches your content for the home page. Lot of times, things could be inadvertently be blocked in robots.txt. For example if you are blocking the whole images folder, and your CSS, javascripts etc, are in the same folder, Google will not be able to read your content the way a normal user sees your content. Making google read your content as close to as a user does, will probably help you more!
The question probably needs more detailed answers. All other professionals can feel free to add/correct. I personally feel that your page is not spammy, but it is, if not more, slightly keyword stuffed.
Hope I helped you clear some of your concerns. Good luck with everything!
-
Not the easiest question to answer, but I'll share my thoughts:
- Keyword density - for me, a red flag is raised anytime this phrase is used even if it's checked only to 'make sure we're not keyword stuffing.' Content should be created to be as helpful as possible to the human visitor; if that's done, search bots should pick up on what your site is about '_organically.' _ Pun intended.
- A quick control-find for "office" shows 36 instances of the word just on your homepage, which is spammy in my opinion. Try using some pronouns to help the content read more naturally.
- Yes, href and alt tags do help search engines understand what your site is about. So if (for example) "office space" is used throughout the page's copy at such a high frequency AND in the link & image tags, then I would consider this kw stuffing / spammy. I'm not familiar with SRE tags, sorry!
- In general, your site seems to offer a lot of valuable content that's just over "optimized," especially on the homepage. I would even suggest redesigning the homepage to be a little more brand and user focused - or at least a refresh of the "What's your search scenario?" section, which is pretty busy/overwhelming & was probably created mostly for SEO.
I hope this helps!
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
-
Difference LSI and and secondary related keywords
Hi, It is confusing to me. So far what I understand is the following: LSI are synonyms of the keyword your target (the one in the H1 and title tag). For example my keyword would be "Tuscany bike tour" and my LSI would be "Tuscany cycling vacation", "bicycle tour in Tuscany" etc... Then secondary related keyword are for me the other topics I need to cover in my content. In this case for example it would be "Florence", "Siena". But from what I understand a good writer wouldn't use "Siena" or "Florence" multiple times in it's content it would replace it by keywords that support them such as "the town of Florence", "the city of Siena"," the Palio of Siena" etc...Is my understanding correct ? If so what is the use of using those secondary related keyword, is it to rank on other keywords such as Palio of siena tuscany bike tour ? or just not to repeat a secondary keyword too many times. If i write the Palio of Siena isn't it considered as another topic that the topic siena ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?
I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms.
However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?0 -
Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server. Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all. For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category. Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants". Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand. Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Meta Keywords Good or Bad
Hi All, I've been reading more about the meta keyword tag and why it may not be a good idea to include them on pages and am looking for thoughts/feedback on this idea. If you have employed this tactic, can you give me some insight into any results you saw. If you decided to not employ this tactic, why did you choose not to? I wan to understand all sides of this before employing any changes to my company's websites. Thank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | airnwater0 -
Keyword Phrases - Can You Break Them Up?
Can you break up a search query across a sentence and have Google still recognize which query you are targeting? Let's say I'm trying to rank a page for the phrase "best haircuts calgary". Is Google's algorithm advanced enough to look at page title "Best Haircuts - Where To Get Them In Calgary" and know it's targeting the query "best haircuts calgary"? If it can't do this right now, I could see it advancing to this at some point in the future, which would then change the game quite a bit in terms of how creative you can get creating pages for queries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Proper way to include Location & Zipcode Keywords
I have a client that is insisting that I add a list of approximately 50 cities and 80 zipcodes that their business serves within the keyword meta tag. Based on what I have been reading this will do absolutely nothing to help improve their search ranking. What would be the proper way today to let inform search engines of the geolocations a business serves?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mmurphy0 -
Zero visits from keyword in Google Analytics
The keyword "business engagement in outsourcing" shows 0 visits. I have a look at Seomoz post at - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/advanced-google-analytics. According to it, "If someone makes more than one visit to a site within the same "session" and each visit comes from a search but on different keywords, then both keywords will be included in the keywords report - the first with 0 visits and the second with 1 visit" In my GA report, i could only see 0 visit for the above keyword. Why is 1 visit not being shown ? On reading the blog, http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-analytics-tips-and-tricks-why-do.html#axzz1UPqhMV7o i am more confused, as it says "Google Analytics, assigns the visitors activity to the first keyword " . which is NOT what seomoz suggests
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Subdomains for niche related keywords
I wanted to know how efficient using a subdomain is, taking in consideration all the updates Google has made lately. I am looking to use a subdomain for a well branded website for a niche specific part of their website. The subdomain will end-up having more than 100 pages. I'd like to see in what cases do you guys recommend using a subdomain? How to get the same benefit out of a subdomain as i am getting from the actual main domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMTM0