How to avoid keyword stuffing on e-Commerce Category pages
-
Hi,
I'm optimizing a large, consumer electronic e-commerce superstore. Based on client's choice of keywords, I'm using product category pages as my target urls. Because of the proprietary CMS structure, product names and titles, featured on my landing pages (product category pages) create a keyword overkill, affecting various ranking factors.
For example, one of the target urls / landing pages, dedicated to a specific product category, mentions the keyword over 190 times because of so many product titles in the "body" section.
Would inline "rel="canonical" help? If yes, what part of the website should it "canonize"? If rel="canonical" is not the answer, what strategies would you suggest?
Thanks!
-
Losing PR does not necessarily mean that you are being penalized by Google for keyword stuffing. Have you noticed a change in rankings or traffic?
It sounds like the cause is between an inflexible CMS and a client who has their own ideas. Would changing the product title really hurt their traffic in e-commerce engines? Are there any products with traffic that the client would be willing to test? Can you gather any data (e.g. traffic/competitive data for a more ideal product name) to show what they're missing out on?
Some projects include more diplomacy, convincing and teaching than technical knowledge or link building. This might be one of those.
Without seeing the pages in question, I can only offer my best guess.
-
Hi Carson,
Thanks for your reply!
Are links from the category page to the product page forced to use the same text?
Yes, product links from category pages are using the same keyword.
**Must the anchor text include the category name? **
The category name matches numerous product titles featured on the same page. We tried discussing the possibility of removing the matching keyword from product titles. Client refuses to do so to avoid losses of traffic from e-commerce engines.
How do you know that keyword stuffing is the problem?
From the SEOMOZ on-page analysis report
**Google tends to be a forgiving with repetitive product names on e-commerce sites. **
Thanks for the info! Despite of our link building and on-page content development efforts, the PR for our landing pages has dropped. I was under the impression that this was caused by adding more unique content (i.e. category description) to the category page and, thus, increasing the amount of keyword usage.
-
Hey there,
Perhaps you could clarify exactly how the CMS structure is creating a "keyword overkill." Are links from the category page to the product page forced to use the same text? Must the anchor text include the category name? Is the CMS pulling product specifications into the anchor text? Does the CMS just insert the word "body" into product names with reckless abandon?
Google tends to be a forgiving with repetitive product names on e-commerce sites. How do you know that keyword stuffing is the problem?
Recommending a fix is going to be next to impossible until we better understand the problem. Based on the conjectures I'm making, I can't imagine how a canonical would help. If the CMS is getting in the way, you may need to focus your energy on convincing them to make the change, rather than beating your head against a wall while pulling in a different direction.
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
-
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
Google Search Console issue: "This is how Googlebot saw the page" showing part of page being covered up
Hi everyone! Kind of a weird question here but I'll ask and see if anyone else has seen this: In Google Search Console when I do a fetch and render request for a specific site, the fetch and blocked resources all look A-OK. However, in the render, there's a large grey box (background of navigation) that covers up a significant amount of what is on the page. Attaching a screenshot. You can see the text start peeking out below (had to trim for confidentiality reasons). But behind that block of grey IS text. And text that apparently in the fetch part Googlebot does see and can crawl. My question: is this an issue? Should I be concerned about this visual look? Or no? Never have experienced an issue like that. I will say - trying to make a play at a featured snippet and can't seem to have Google display this page's information, despite it being the first result and the query showing a featured snippet of a result #4. I know that it isn't guaranteed for the #1 result but wonder if this has anything to do with why it isn't showing one. VmIqgFB.png
On-Page Optimization | | ChristianMKG0 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
Your opinion on "Keyword | Keyword 2 | Keyword 3 - Sitename" Meta Title
While I'm personally against It I have seen it used. I would think that Google might see this as some degree of keyword stuffing, rather than a 'natural' title, which may hinder ranking. What are your thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | azu250 -
Does the title tag on the home page affect sub-pages?
Hello. I am thinking of changing our home page title tag to include our two most valuable keywords from two of our sub-pages. Would this help the rankings of those two sub-pages? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Keyword optimization of main keyword across site.
My site is optimized for keyword "payment gateway" but it seems for each keyword only one page should be optimized as per good SEO. So if I've a page about Paypal then how should I spread the keywords? Here the main will be Paypal and site keyword will be payment gateway. It means site should have more Paypal than payment gateway. But can payment gateway be in 3rd or 4th position in density? Similarly how should I create other pages? How search engines determine the site authority based on keyword? ( let us ignore the external backlinks, context of them and anchor texts).
On-Page Optimization | | rag_gupta0 -
Old pages
I have a site where I have 5,000 new products each year, I never waned to deleted the old pages due to links pointing to them and keywords. But I now have 20,000 plus pages, does having that many pages spread out my link juice or does it effect me in any other ways over having a site with 5,000 pages or should I keep not deleting old pages so I dont loose any links? Along with that I currently do not link to my old pages from my site so Im guessing google does not get to them very often if at all, if you agree to still keep them should I link to them somewhere? Because the products are not that simiiar and they do bring added value I dont think canonical would work here
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
On my site, www.myagingfolks.com, only a small number of my pages appear to be indexed by google or yahoo. Is that due to not having an XML sitemap, keywords, or some other problem?
On my site, www.myagingfolks.com, only a small number of my pages appear to be indexed by google or yahoo. I have thousands of pages! Is that due to not having an XML sitemap, keywords, or some other problem?
On-Page Optimization | | Jordanrg0