Keyword Stuffing and Product Reviews
-
Hello Fellow Mozzers!
I am pretty new the SEO world and have been tasked with improving our companies SEO with no prior knowledge of anything to do with SEO as of about 5 months ago.
So far, I have been fairly successful (May be luck).
There is a product page on our website that has moved from Rank 8-9 all the way up to Rank 3, on a high volume keyword, which increased our traffic to that URL by 500%! I was very proud of this accomplishment until tragedy struck... We suddenly dropped to Rank 6.
It doesn't look like we've lost any Backlinks to this URL. My suspicion is that we got penalized for Keyword Stuffing since we recently changed from have multiple pages for a specific product's reviews to having them all on one page (To decrease the number of URLs our Site has). Many of these product reviews have the Keyword in them making us have over 30 of this specific keyword on our page.
Could this be a valid suspicion? Should we go back to having different URLs for reviews and Disallow them for Robots?
-
Thanks so much for your insight, I used the MOZ on page grader and it flagged for Keyword Stuffing for that reason, that's what got me worried. Knowing that Google can tell that reviews are natural consumer generated content puts my concerns at ease. It must just be a natural ranking shift.
Hopefully we'll shift back up to the top 3 soon!
-
Hello!
Welcome to the world of SEO, and Moz
Before making any big changes, I would do a few things:
- Keep an eye on your daily rankings for the top keywords to that page. Quite often these sort of rankings changes are normal to a certain degree. I would give it some time and keep an eye on the flux to get a sense for how much they are moving around.
- To piggyback on that, definitely be sure to track / watch rankings and metrics for many keywords, not just the top volume keyword.
- Also - did you see a NET loss in organic traffic to the page also? Sometimes, because of all the long tail keywords, despite losing ranking for a top keyword, you may not lose much traffic.
- Track competitors rankings too! You'll probably also see their rankings shifting around a lot - and this is a great way to tell if the ranking changes are just 'normal' for your space.
As you can see, a lot of good SEO is about having clear data that paints the whole picture
Now to your question specifically, I highly doubt that would trigger a keyword stuffing issue. Google is pretty good at mapping out the contents of the page. They likely know this is user generated content, and don't count keywords in there the same way they do you 'main' content.
I would dig around for common accessibility or technical issues - like mobile friendliness, do a fetch and render in Search Console (and make sure the images etc are accessible) etc.
But in short, unless you see a very clear drop in rankings, traffic across many pages and many keywords it's likely 'business as usual' with normal algo fluxuations
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
-
Insurance agency - Videos for product pages
I use a company that provides me with insurance related videos. However - these video's can not be shared on You Tube, for whatever reason. My question is; if I add these video's to my product pages on my website will it hurt me in any way? OR do I need to add the text underneath the video? Or do something else to optimize them? I don't want to hurt my pages in any way - but the videos are informative and good quality. Thoughts? and thanks 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | MissThumann0 -
Appropriate Keyword Usage in Document
Moz on page grader - Text content is very important for modern SEO. In order to optimize your chances of ranking higher for the targeted keyword(s), we recommend using the targeted keyword(s) at least 4 times. Recommendation: Add at least 4 instances of the targeted keyword(s) to the document text of this page. Is there any preferred word count for the web page/blog? for example it is not good to add keyword 4 time in 200 words content. and We need to add exact keyword 4 times in the content?
On-Page Optimization | | marknorman0 -
URL Keyword Variations?
I'm aware that keywords in the url aren't as effective as they used to be, but I'm still convinced that they do have a significant impact (based on results in one of the niches I'm in). My question is, will variations of keywords and "hidden" keywords have as much value as an exact keyword? For example, let's say that I'm trying to target the keyword "day." Will including variations like "daily" in the url work just as well? What about a brand name that includes the keyword hidden in its name, like "Dayest"? And, as a followup question, does including "stop" words have any effect? For example, if I'm trying to target the keyword "Day of the Month", would including "day" and "month" in the url be just as effective as including "day of the month"?
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
How does Google Detect which keywords my website should show up for in the SE?
When I checked my Google Webmaster Tools I found that my website is showing up for keywords that I didn't optimize for ... for example I optimize my website for "funny pictures with captions", and the website is showing up for "funny images with captions". I know that this is good, but the keyword is dancing all around, sometimes I search for "funny pictures with captions" and I show up in the 7th page, and some time I don't show up. and the same goes for the other keyword. of course I am optimizing for more than two keywords but the results is not consistent. my question is how does Google decide which keywords you website should show up for? Is it the on-page keywords?, or is it the off-page anchor text keywords? Thank you in advance ...
On-Page Optimization | | FarrisFahad
FarrisFahad0 -
Keywords per Page
Iv'e looked through the QA here and there are a lot of different conflicting opinions on what is a generally a good idea. For Example Florist Clearwater Clearwater Florist Florist in Clearwater Florist in Clearwater FL Clearwater FL Florist Clearwater Florida Florist Florist in Clearwater Florida Florist near Clearwater FL etc.... So for something like this example....should I have one page represent all of these keyword iterations or split them among different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BenGMKT0 -
How often should ecommerce category and product descriptions be rewritten?
We are a 15 year old ecommerce company. Most of our category descriptions are about 3 years old. Our product descriptions are 5-8 years old. While our category pages still rank well in Google our product pages have dropped significantly over time. How often should product page descriptions be rewritten so they do not become stale to Google? We have about 1,000 products on the site. If we rewrite them we are thinking about 250 words each. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | SLINC0 -
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 -
Adding keywords to URL's
I understand the importance of having the keyword in the URL (at least now I do). When I created my site (www.enchantingquotes.com), I was completely ignorant about SEO. So....question is...how do I go about adding keywords to already done pages? Do I create a new section and then redirect - or do I have to basically recreate pages? Thx much 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | enchantedgirlz0