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
-
Combining products - edit existing product page or 301 redirect to new page?
We want to combine existing products - e.g. 'hand lotion' and 'body lotion' will become 'hand & body lotion'. As such, we'll need to combine the two product pages into one. What would be the best route to take in terms of SEO to do this? My initial reaction is to create a new product page and then 301 or 302 redirect the old products to the new product page depending on if the change is permanent or temporary. Would you agree? Or am I missing something?
On-Page Optimization | | SwankyApple1 -
Keyword position
I fixed all the crawl issues but still my website is in second page.
On-Page Optimization | | NueveSolution0 -
Product Tag Value on SEO
Do product tags for ecommerce sites have any benefit to SEO? Or are they redundant? i.e. thespacecollective.com/astronaut-moldavite-pendant (tags appear below the product name on the right)
On-Page Optimization | | moon-boots0 -
Putting review aggregation in product's navigation
Do you guys think it's a bad idea to put a review aggregation page in a product's navigation? Such as: "Which Brand of Men's Shampoo Is Best for You?" Rand suggests against it in this Whiteboard Friday as it interferes with a product's funnel, but I wonder if including it in navigation will give a domain and that page increased authority for a head keyword, such as "men's shampoo." What do you guys think?
On-Page Optimization | | Edward_Sturm0 -
Regarding Showing Shopper Approved Review on All Products
Hi All, We're planning to add Customers Reviews tab on product pages ! And, We'll display Shopper Approved reviews on product pages. But, I have biggest concern for internal duplication. If we will display similar reviews on all product pages then it will create internal duplication issue and We may get impact for Google Penalty. What should we Do to display Shopper approved reviews on all products.
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Keyword at homepage
Hi there! Is it true that the most relevant keyword should it be located in the home page of a website since it has the most link-juice or this statement is a "myth"? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
To use or not to use: Keywords with locations
Hello there. I work for a marketing agency that manages SEO campaigns for a variety of small businesses in South Florida. Let's say we have a client that sells cheap shoes at their store location. Obviously, we want to show up in Google rankings for search terms like "cheap shoes south florida" or "cheap shoes miami." Now, my question is, when optimizing a website's content for various keywords, is it really necessary to include keywords with the location (which are often awkward for both reading and writing purposes)? Ideally, I'd prefer to have text that always reads as naturally as possible. Text like this is just an eyesore: Welcome to ExampleSite.com, home of the best cheap shoes Florida. We offer all kinds of cheap shoes Boca Raton. Your whole family doesn't have enough fingers and toes to count how many cheap shoes West Palm Beach we have in stock! Contact us to ask about our cheap shoes Miami discounts today! Olé!" What say you? Is there a way to work around ugly SEO text like this while still effectively ranking for GEO terms? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BBEXNinja0 -
Lead With Branded Keywords or Descriptive Keywords in Page Title for (Niche) Site?
Our site is hingeheads.com, and our products and product catalog are unique in two ways. For one our product is not something that people are generally aware of, and secondly our entire product catalog consists of different variations of the same product. **Catalog Overview: **http://hingeheads.com/collections/all Product Example: http://hingeheads.com/products/dolphin I keep wondering if it is better to lead the title with "branded keywords" [1] or with "descriptive keywords" [2]? Dolphin HingeHead | Unique Home Decor & Gift Idea | HingeHeads Dolphin Decor Accessories & Unique Gift Ideas | HingeHeads I am currently going with the second solution, but I am always wondering if that's the right/better solution. I am curious to hear feedback from people who have more experience with this than I do. How would you structure the title for our product pages? Thanks! Kai
On-Page Optimization | | hingeheads0