Potential issue: Page design might look like keyword stuffing to a web crawler
-
We have an interesting design element we might try on our home page. Here's a mockup: https://codepen.io/dsbudiac/pen/Bwrgjd
I'm worried web crawlers will interpret this as keyword stuffing and affect our rankings. It features:
- Mostly transparent/hidden text
- Repeating keyword list
I could try a couple methods to skirt around crawling concerns:
- Load keywords through an iframe
- Make the keywords an image (would significantly increase page load)
- Inject keywords after page load into a container w/ javascript (prob not effective as crawlers are only getting better at indexing javascript)
- Load the keywords into an svg element
- Load the keywords into a canvas element via javascript
I have a few questions:
- Should I be concerned about any potential keyword stuffing / SEO issues with this design?
- Can you comment on the effectiveness (with proof) of the above strategies?
- Am I better off just abandoning this type of design?
-
Ah, a very interesting question!
I'd not be too concerned; you're loading the content in through a data attribute rather than directly as text. However, there are definitely a few options you could consider:
- Render via SVG feels like the safest bet, though that's going to be a pretty large, complex set of vectors.
- Save + serve as an image (and overcome the file size concerns by using WebP, HTTP/2, a CDN like Cloudflare, etc)
- Serve the content via a dedicated JavaScript file, which you could block access to via robots.txt (a bit fudgey!)
I'd be keen to explore #2 - feels like you should be able to achieve the effect you're after with an image which isn't ridiculously huge.
-
Never said the image option was hard. It's just not ideal as it increases page load and is less flexible. A noindex'd iframe seems to be the best option. We already have a working proof of concept, thanks.
-
As long as you don't use that text inside a header, link, or some relevant piece of content you don't have to worry about it. As I understand h1 is the main factor of Google to determine the main keyword of a specific page.
-
I thought about using googleon/googleoff tags, but apparently that's only for Google Search Appliance, and not traditional google search/index: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/54735/can-you-use-googleon-and-googleoff-comments-to-prevent-googlebot-from-indexing-p
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
-
Keyword stuffing on category pages - eCommerce site
Hi there fellow Mozzers. I work for a wine company, and I have a theory that some of our category pages are not ranking as well as they could, due to keyword stuffing. The best example is our Champagne category page, which we are trying to rank for the keyword Champagne, currently rank 6ish. However, when I load the page into Moz, it tells me that I might be stuffing, which I am not, BUT my products might be giving both Moz and Google this impression as well. Our product names for any given Champagne is "Champagne - {name}" and the producer is "Champagne {producer name}. Now, on the category pages we have a list of Champagnes, actually 44 Which means that with the way we display them, with both name of the wine, the name of the producer AND the district. That means we have 132 mentions of the word "Champagne" + the content text that I have written. I am wondering, how good is Google at identifying that this is in fact not stuffing, but rather functionality that makes for this high density of the keyword? Is there anything I can do? I mean, we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer a bit, not a lot - but it's a question of balance and I would like to hear if anyone has encountered a similar problem, if it is in fact a problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nikolaj-Landrock2 -
What is the impact of an off-topic page to other pages on the site?
We are working with a client who has one irrelevant, off-topic post ranking incredibly well and driving a lot of traffic. However, none of the other pages on the site, that are relevant to this client's business, are ranking. Links are good and in-line with competitors for the various terms. Oddly, very few external links reference this off-topic post, most are to the home page. Local profile is also in-line with competitors, including reviews, categorization, geo-targeting, pictures, etc. No spam issues exist and no warnings in Google Search Console. The only thing that seems weird is this off-topic post but that could affect rankings on other pages of the site? Would removing that off-topic post potentially help increase traffic and rankings for the other more relevant pages of the site? Appreciate any and all help or ideas of where to go from here. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Matthew_Edgar0 -
Category Pages
I'm debating on what the best category structure is for a recipe website and was looking to get some advice. It's a recipe/travel/health fitness blog but recipes reign on the site. Should it be: Option A website name\recipe\type of recipe\URL of specific recipe or Option B website name\type of recipe\url of specific recipe (and just cut out the 'recipe' category name) Any advise would be appreciated! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich-DC0 -
Client wants to show 2 different types of content based on cookie usage - potential cloaking issue?
Hi, A client of mine has compliance issues in their industry and has to show two different types of content to visitors: domain.com/customer-a/about-us domain.com/customer-b/about-us Next year, they have to increase that to three different types of customer. Rather than creating a third section (customer-c), because it's very similar to one of the types of customers already (customer-b), their web development agency is suggesting changing the content based on cookies, so if a user has indentified themselves as customer-b, they'll be shown /customer-b/, but if they've identified themselves as customer-c, they'll see a different version of /customer-b/ - in other words, the URL won't change, but the content on the page will change, based on their cookie selection. I'm uneasy about this from an SEO POV because: Google will only be able to see one version (/customer-b/ presumably), so it might miss out on indexing valuable /customer-c/ content, It makes sense to separate them into three URL paths so that Google can index them all, It feels like a form of cloaking - i.e. Google only sees one version, when two versions are actually available. I've done some research but everything I'm seeing is saying that it's fine, that it's not a form of cloaking. I can't find any examples specific to this situation though. Any input/advice would be appreciated. Note: The content isn't shown differently based on geography - i.e. these three customers would be within one country (e.g. the UK), which means that hreflang/geo-targeting won't be a workaround unfortunately.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | steviephil0 -
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Entire site code copied - potential SEO issues?
Hi folks, We have noticed that our site has been directly duplicated by another site. They have copied the entire code, including the JS, CSS and most of the HTML and have simply switched their own text and images onto the template. (We discovered it because they even copied over our analytics tracking and were appearing in our reports - duh!) Does anyone know if there are potential SEO issues in copying the code like that, or do duplicate content issues only apply to indexable HTML content? Thanks! Matthew (I didn't want to out them by sharing their URL because it could have been an external contractor that built the site and they probably had no idea.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattBarker0 -
Optimize short tail keyword by optimizing long tail keyword
Many SEO's said that if i have a keyword suppose 'coat stand' that is very competitive and second keyword is 'cheap coat stand' that is less competitive .If we promote long tail keyword (cheap coat stand) than ranking of 'coat stand' will improve.Is it true?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
Google swapped our website's long standing ranking home page for a less authoritative product page?
Our website has ranked for two variations of a keyword, one singular & the other plural in Google at #1 & #2 (for over a year). Keep in mind both links in serps were pointed to our home page. This year we targeted both variations of the keyword in PPC to a products landing page(still relevant to the keywords) within our website. After about 6 weeks, Google swapped out the long standing ranked home page links (p.a. 55) rank #1,2 with the ppc directed product page links (p.a. 01) and dropped us to #2 & #8 respectively in search results for the singular and plural version of the keyword. Would you consider this swapping of pages temporary, if the volume of traffic slowed on our product page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JingShack0