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
-
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 -
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 -
Worried about keyword stuffing penalty re: URLs
I've noticed a potential problem with a mult-location business (this is an example URL - not the actual name of the business) I sense this is OK: carsdepots.com/ashford/cars But then I noticed they've added cars to location part of URL in some instances (they have 6 locations in total and have done this with 5 of them): carsdepots.com/birmingham-cars/cars So we have cars in there 3 times (that's the maximum number of times in any URL but it looks a little spammy to me) I am tempted to remove yoga from the location names, or flatten the URL structure completely - your thoughts would be welcome, or perhaps I shouldn't even be worrying?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Wordpress site, MOZ showing missing meta description but pages do not exist on backend
I've got a wordpress website (a client) and MOZ keeps showing missing meta descriptions. When I look at the pages these are nonsense pages, they do exist somewhere but I am not seeing them on the backend. Questions: 1) how do I fix this? Maybe it's a rel con issue? why is this referring to "non-sense" pages? When I go to the page there is nothing on it except maybe an image or the headline, it's very strange. Any input out there I greatly appreciate. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SOM240 -
How to redirect whole site to home page without breaking wordpress
Hi all I had a phpprobid site which was heavily indexed but got hacked. I have deleted the old site and installed wordpress and a holding page. I can't work out how to 301 redirect all the old indexed pages to the home page without the existing wordpress redirect. Anyone care to help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RaceMedia0 -
Why google does not show my site on my branding keyword?
Hi, I am the site owner of http://www.lankahq.net. It is a youtube video hosted website. 95% of the video contents are daily telecasting TV shows and categorized to make easy to find the specific video of the day of preferred program of the viewer. About 1 year ago suddenly disappeared my site from the google. Before happened that it was performing very well in search. Google showed my site contents within few minutes after I update in their search results when someone search for that. At the moment it does not show even some one search for "lankahq". It showing only if search for "lankahq.net", "lankahq.com" or "www.lankahq.net" something like a search keyword related to my domain name. Some other websites have added my branding keyword LankaHQ as a user of their site and they showing on top of Google. But not mine. It is much appreciated if someone can have a look on this matter. I can not find where is the problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprasad0 -
How do Google Site Search pages rank
We have started using Google Site Search (via an XML feed from Google) to power our search engines. So we have a whole load of pages we could link to of the format /search?q=keyword, and we are considering doing away with our more traditional category listing pages (e.g. /biology - not powered by GSS) which account for much of our current natural search landing pages. My question is would the GoogleBot treat these search pages any differently? My fear is it would somehow see them as duplicate search results and downgrade their links. However, since we are coding the XML from GSS into our own HTML format, it may not even be able to tell.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdwardUpton610