Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. How to avoid keyword stuffing on e-Commerce Category pages

    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.

    How to avoid keyword stuffing on e-Commerce Category pages

    On-Page Optimization
    2
    4
    2950
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • dimanyc
      dimanyc last edited by

      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!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Carson-Ward
        Carson-Ward @dimanyc last edited by

        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.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • dimanyc
          dimanyc @Carson-Ward last edited by

          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.

          Carson-Ward 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Carson-Ward
            Carson-Ward last edited by

            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.

            dimanyc 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • GOMO-Gabriel

              Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?

              I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword

              On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel
              0
            • MattStott4

              Am I accidentally Keyword Stuffing?

              Hey Guys, So I updated some copy on my site recently and noticed that whatever slender rankings I had (often on page 😎 have completely disappeared.  The copy was the only change I have made. Now I haven't intentionally keyword stuffed however I have noticed that there happens to be a lot keywords in there.  For example on my PPC page I use the phrase PPC 16 times however it has just naturally fallen into the content as that is what I'm writing about.  I'm wondering if there are maybe too many mentions here? 16 repeats of the word PPC and on the page there are 490 words.  Does that feel like too much repetition or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks, Matt

              On-Page Optimization | | MattStott4
              0
            • Palmbourne

              Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.

              We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

              On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne
              0
            • rsigg

              Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?

              I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!

              On-Page Optimization | | rsigg
              0
            • pbess

              Define H2,H3 and H4 for e-commerce sites

              Hi Everybody, I was wondering what is the best way to define H2,H3 and H4 for e-commerce sites. For example, I randomly chose an e-commerce site http://www.designerleds.com/products/high-power/ What would you suggest for H2,H3 and H4? Thank you very much for your help!

              On-Page Optimization | | pbess
              0
            • SeoMartin1

              URLs and folder structure for an E-commerce

              Hi there !-) I´m helping a friend who has a e-commerce about nail polish in Brazil. I´m a little in doubt about the urls and folder structure. Two questions: 1. There are 10 products per category and 50 categories. Should I put them all in the root folder or creat 2 major categories ( 25 sub-categories each one)? 2. Whats the better product page url ( the store has around 500) nailpolish.com/IMPORT/BRAND/NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT OR nailpolish.com/COMPLETE-NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT Whats the best recomandation?

              On-Page Optimization | | SeoMartin1
              0
            • NeilD

              Keywords in Navigation

              Hi, What is best practice for main navigation links with regards to use of keywords in them. For example is it best to using the phrase 'Pricing", "Website Pricing" or "Website Design Pricing" To me 'Pricing' is more appropriate because to the user they know they are on a website designer's site so what else would pricing be for right?!  Furthermore you use less 'real estate' on the nav bar! There is on page text around the site which has links to "see our website design pricing" etc so I assume that is perhaps a more natural place to include that phrase? Look forward to your insights 🙂

              On-Page Optimization | | NeilD
              0
            • semantopic

              Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?

              As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!

              On-Page Optimization | | semantopic
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.