Can Your Site Get Penalized For Keyword Stuffing On An 'Untarged' Keyword?
-
My site has dropped since the EMD/Panda 20 roll out and I am looking for reasons why.
I am looking at Keyword Stuffing as one potential problem.
My web site is on the topic of WordPress Security with that being the main keyword I want to target.
Now I can limit the number of occurrences of 'wordpress security' to below the recommended 15, but it is impossible to do this for 'wordpress' without severely compromising the user experience.
I've got other content on topics such as WordPress Backup and WordPress Security Plugins etc, so obviously the word 'wordpress' is bound to appear frequently.
Is there a risk that Google will penalize me for Keyword Stuffing on 'wordpress' and thus pull down the site or page for other keywords?
Or would it simply mean I won't be able to rank for 'wordpress' (which I am quite happy about)?
Thanks!
-
Excellent suggestions - thanks!
-
Hi Anders,
I think Ruth made some great points in her comments above. I read over your content and several things occur to me. If this were my project, I may consider reorganizing some of the information on the home page.
Further below in the page, you have some items that appear to be FAQ(ish). You might find an opportunity to move some of this content into another page, but create a call to action (anchored text links) to them. This helps you gain traffic deeper into your site content, so the home page asks the question, which do well. The links draw them further into the site and engages them to convert (download).
Also, I'm seeing the alt image tag text report the use of "The WordPress Security Checklist" several times. I would consider using this term once versus the three occurrences.
The strengths that you have is the keyword term in the URL, which is a huge benefit. Ruth's comments on using WP versus wordpress is insightful, because it bolsters the URL. I would scale back to find a bit more balance and you'll get there. You can always scale back up, as you see fit.
Also, here is a flag to consider:
Multiple meta description tags found!
I'm sure others may have more specific input, but this is what I would consider adjusting. The joy of SEO is research, implement, test, and modify...
Best of Luck,
andrew
-
OK, when I run the On Page Optimization tool on the competitors site it only shows 16 occurrences of the term 'wordpress security'.
The remaining occurrences appeared in a twitter widget, which I guess is loaded in an iframe or by javascript or something like that...
There were 34 occurrences of the word 'wordpress' on the competitor site.
-
Yup, makes sense now. And try not to focus too much on an actual percentage when it comes to keyword frequency. Google never set a standard; that is just some experienced SEO's best educated estimation.
-
Someone on the Google Webmaster forum also suggested the 'read out loud' test.
I like it, and did go through the text with fresh eyes. I managed to make some good changes and build in some more variation.
I think I might just be too focused on the limit of 15...
-
Sorry for being unclear... was worried that if Google was going to penalize me for overusing 'wordpress' I'd suffer for the word 'wordpress security' too...
Does that make sense?
-
If you're suffering from Panda, another thing to look at is how much content you have overall. If you've got a small amount of text and it has high recurrence of keywords, that's a bad sign for Panda. A tip I like to use when it comes to keyword stuffing is to read your text out loud. If it sounds unnatural, you're probably using the keyword too often. I would focus on creating some new quality content and on making your language sound natural.
If you feel like you're saying Wordpress too much but it's negatively impacting your site, you could use "WP" or other variations to add some variety.
-
The first thing that came to my mind is that you may not be intending to target this specific word, but because it's stuffed throughout the page, Google may think you're targeting it.
I'm also confused as to what the issue is if you're afraid Google will think you're keyword stuffing and won't rank you for ''Wordpress'' but you say that you actually don't want to rank for that anyway.
I'm just going to go with the standard best practice here and say to write the article for your users, not Google. Write it the way you would if Google did not exist. Google's algorithms are smarter than you think, and penalization of quality content that is intended for user experience is not something that generally happens.
-
Would you mind providing a site link? It would be helpful to see an example.
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
-
MOZ identifies duplicate titles - one has' www' in the title
MOZ has identified duplicate titles - one has' www' in the title. - we have a few pieces of content where the same thing is happening. Not sure how this has happened. Should we do something about this? Will it cause problems for ranking? | KETAMINE GUIDE FOR DRUG WORKERS - free | Harm reduction informationhttp://substance.org.uk/harm-reduction-information/ketamine-guide-for-drug-workers-free | 13 | 2 |
On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create
| KETAMINE GUIDE FOR DRUG WORKERS - free | Harm reduction informationhttp://www.substance.org.uk/harm-reduction-information/ketamine-guide-for-drug-workers-free | 13 | 4 | 1 - 2 of 20 -
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | | Bee1590 -
On Site Errors
HI Folks I'm monitoring a small Australian site bluetea.com.au . Currently I have a SEO specialist who does month onsite maintenance work for this site. However each month I continue to see errors in webmaster tools... as an example, currently webmaster tools suggest we have 21 short meta dic and 26 duplicate title tags..... Examples given are Short Meta Discp /cleaning-products-and-our-health/toxic-cleaners/ /colour-consultant/fushia-door/ /portfolio/parisian-apartment-black-kitchen/parisian-apartment-black-kitchen/ Duplicate title tags <a id="zip_0-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>concrete-kitchen | Blue Tea Kitchen Designs /kitchen-trends-and-material-innovation/concrete-kitchen-2//kitchen-trends-for-2013/concrete-kitchen/<a id="zip_1-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>Potts Point Kitchen | Blue Tea Kitchen Designs/portfolio/potts-point-kitchen//portfolio/potts-point-kitchen/pott-point-kitchen/My SEO tells me that he has solved all these issues but after one or two months they still remain in webmaster tools... can anybody help me understand why?Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | PHD0 -
Hiding body copy with a 'read more' button
Hi Whats the consequences of hiding half of the lovingly crafted body copy/written content (good quality modern version of what we used to call seo text) i have written for a clients main site sections and then having a 'read more' button to reveal ? I have written 500+ words for each page but client wants to reduce word count displayed since thinks looks too 'wordy'! I know that this is possible and used to be fine if done in a manner that was still crawlable, is this still the case ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Do sites built with WordPress work in China get indexed by Baidu?
I think that WordPress.com is banned, but are websites that are created by WordPress get banned?
On-Page Optimization | | CoGri0 -
Are Meta-keywords coming back?
I'm currently doing some benchmarking for a big realtor site here in México, while looking at the biggest players in the US I noticed most if not all are using the Keywords meta tag in their detail listings. I've been really open to my client about not using this tag at all given the current common knowledge but when sites like: Trulia.com, Realtor.com, appartments.com and the like, are using them I'm second guessing their utility. Does anyone have any insights on this? Should or should not we use meta-keywords? On a side note, there is some interesting microdata going on, in those sites.
On-Page Optimization | | makote1 -
How can I get on-page analysis reports ?
I started trying out seomoz' facilities as a way to give myself a checklist of things to do-and-don't while learning SEO. Faced with a ton of new and interesting information, I started optimizing my home page and writing some content that can tell a story to people in my business. So I started using on-page analysis tools. But the campaign opening screen is telling me to wait for reports approx. two weeks. There are some reports ( not so good ones, a lot to improve ) but not the one I need most: the on-page analysis one. I set up two campaigns and I have the same problem for both. Am I doing something wrong ? Can I change my pages to make this work ?
On-Page Optimization | | wiebe0 -
What's the best practice for implementing a "content disclaimer" that doesn't block search robots?
Our client needs a content disclaimer on their site. This is a simple "If you agree to these rules then click YES if not click NO" and you're pushed back to the home page. I have this gut feeling that this may cause an upset with the search robots. Any advice? R/ John
On-Page Optimization | | TheNorthernOffice790