Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document
-
I have been implementing changes to our site outlined by the
on-page report tool. One of the most common issues it highlighted with our site
was Avoid Keyword
Stuffing in Document. I have started reducing the number of
keywords on each page so it falls under the recommended 15. So far we haven’t
seen any positive effects from this and i am a little concerned we might be
seeing some negative effect (very early days).Has anyone else implemented this change recently and what effect
did it have?Is this recommendation more in preparation to the up and coming
update from Google that will penalise over optimised sites?Any info much appreciated
Jos Davies
-
Keyword density today is somewhat of a myth. If it is natural, then Google is very forgiving of keyword stuffing, and they have pretty good algorithms to determine what is natural or not.
With that in mind, the SEOmoz On page tools should be considered more of a guide than an absolute rule.
I could go on, but these two videos say it better than I could:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/advanced-onpage-optimization-whiteboard-friday
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-new-onpage-optimization-whiteboard-friday
-
Jos, keep an eye on other posts that relate to rankings fluctuations. A Google update is coming. Whether or not some of these observations showing on the forum radar is the initial affects of the update remains to be seen.
Be careful to panic or over-assume or you might start grabbing at straws.
-
Hi, I'm not certain at all, buts it’s the only thing that has
been changed on the page. It could be a case of Google readjusting, or not
related at all.I was just hoping to hear from users who had implemented similar changes. Hopefully by Monday the page will be back in the same position it was yesterday.
Thanks
Jos
-
Included in that count is the H1 instance of the keyword. Are you certain that keyword density is the only factor at play in your rankings?
-
3 or 4 !, I have always strugggled to get the keyword mentions that low. I'm talking about removing 7 out of 40 refrences!! I wanted to remove more but i was worried that we might see a drop (and we have). Maybe its down to somtheing else. I will be keeping a close eye over the weekend
Out of interest when you say 3 or 4, is that just body text or do you count the h1 h2 etc
Thanks again
Jos
-
Hi Jos. I've not heard of the less than 15 keyword rule. SEOmoz research tools puts the sweet spot at four. We've found 2-5 instances produce good results depending on the volume of content, competitiveness of the keyword and our domain authority. For perspective, if we have dense above the fold content we keep it to four or less. If our content goes below the fold we'll work in one or two more instances for even distribution.
-
It seems to be a bit dangerous to describe the Avoid Keyword
Stuffing in Document reccomendation as high importance if its not proven to be of benefit.Maybe its should be downgraded to an optional factor?
-
MyHolidayMarketing, I think it could be seen as removing a penalty, more than a bonus. I mean, if a website is filled with a large amount of superoptimized text it it can be penalized, if it then removes that text the malus could be removed too. So that what seems a good action is only "not to do a bad action".
If that text would be great content, using naturally that term/those terms tons of times, probably it wouldn't be penalized, on the countrary, dealing with Panda algorithm, it would be seen as a strenght for that website.
Maybe you can see the (n° keyword)/(total words) ratio to see how your content is good.
Anyone knows the correct range of values for that ratio? -
Hi Thanks for the reply, yes i remember that post and it shows the importance of the point.
I would never stuff a page with keywords, and i would like to think no self respecting content writer would, but in some cases there is only one way to describe a product and you can naturally end up with a large ammount of mentions of a particular product on one page.
I'm just not sure where the figure of 15 has come from because surely it should be more based on a percentage than an over all figure.
Anyway, i would really like to here any other examples of user users trying to stick with the under 15 keywords rule
-
If the large number of keywords were natural (An SEO agency talking about SEO in a large blog post for example, might mention it meny times naturaly) then I wouldn't worry about it.
If you have been artifically stuffing your documents with keywords, I would be more concerned about how it reads to a human long before worrying about google. People tend to not to trust obviously keyword stuffed content.
The 'keyword stuffing' has been a reccomendation long before the coming update. I do remember there being a blog post here and a similar QA question on over optimisation where removing 2-3 instances of a keyword massivly improved rankings - Showing that it has been possable to be penalised for over-optimisation for a long time now.
One of the blog posts can be found here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lessons-learned-by-an-over-optimizer-14730
Hope this helps.
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
-
How i can increase my site Moz DA and keyword difficulty difficulty?
Is there any way to increase my site Authority through increasing DA of my site and Keyword difficulty ? my site is about gamming like https://cpsandtypingtest.com/
Moz Pro | | sathoiue80 -
Comparing New vs. Old Keyword Difficulty Scores
We've had a few questions regarding the new Keyword Difficulty score used in Keyword Explorer, and how it compares to the old score in our stand-alone Keyword Difficulty tool. Specifically, people want to know why some scores are much lower using the new tool. There a general discussion of the math behind the tool in this post: Keyword Research in 2016: Going Beyond Guesswork One of the problems we had with the original Keyword Difficulty score is that, because it's based on our Page Authority (PA) score and PA tends toward the middle of the 0-100 range, Difficulty got a bit bunched up. A Difficulty score in the low-to-mid 20s (via the old tool) is actually very low. So, we set out to re-scale the new tool to broaden that score and use more of the 0-100 range. We hoped this would allow more granularity and better comparisons. While the logic is sound, we're concerned that we may have been too aggressive in this re-scaling, given recent feedback. So, we're going to be analyzing a large set of keywords (anonymously, of course) that people have run through the tool to see if too many Difficulty scores seem too low. If they do, we'll make some adjustments to the math. In the meantime, please be aware that low scores may appear lower in the new tool and very high scores may appear higher. We wanted to address some of the limitations in V1 and feedback over the years, and so the old and new scores really can't be compared directly in a meaningful way. We're sorry for any confusion that has caused, and we will re-evaluate if necessary.
Moz Pro | | Dr-Pete3 -
Finding Related Keywords and/or Phrases
I'm diving into unknown territory and looking for keywords and phrases related to a prospective new clients business. He knows some of the general terms, for example, water removal. What tool works best to find related search terms and the number of searches for those keywords/search terms. I usually use the Google Keyword Tool but going to give moz a try. Love to be able to get local search data as well. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | DFLsports1 -
How do I search for keywords or events within my facebook and twitter pages?
Hi all, I work for a bicycle component manufacturer. We have a group of different facebook and twitter pages each covering different aspects of our market ie: mountain biking, road biking, and urban biking. I am wondering if it is possible to apply the keywords function of moz to my firm's individual facebook and twitter pages? I would like to be able to search for specific products that we have launched in the past. I am trying to collect the amount of social media responses we have received for certain products. It would be great if I could even search for sentiments about the products we have launched. Thank you!
Moz Pro | | mdaysram0 -
Noob question about keyword research
I have a client that does commercial building renovations. I looked at a lot of their competitors and did some googling to see what words people were using. Some terms such as commercial fit-outs, didn't really have any search volume. I did pick out some that had some volume, Google KW Tool said anywhere from 46 local searches for something like "commercial construction contractors" to 320 for "commercial construction companies". However, no data really shows up for local specifics like "commercial construction companies philadelphia". I tried looking at competitors in the Moz site explorer, but not too many were doing much link building to look at anchor text. Question 1) When it says "local monthly searches", is it defaulting to MY local area based on my google info? So if im in Philly area that local area is whats displaying? Question 2) I tried to run the same keyword list I pulled from Adwords tool through Moz KW tool, and it tells me some of the terms don't have ANY traffic! So know I am real confused as to whether the KW's i picked are good or crap! I attached image of the stuff. CnYyNb3
Moz Pro | | satoridesign0 -
Erroneous "Weekly Keyword Ranking & On-page Optimization Report" For Campaign
Hi, I just received an email alert from Seomoz telling me my "Weekly Keyword Ranking & On-page Optimization Report " for the period 11/06/12 - 11/13/12 is ready. It is just a copy of the previous report though, all rankings and ranking changes are the same. What is up with that? Best regards, Martin
Moz Pro | | TalkInThePark0 -
What's up with Yahoo and Bing in my keyword rankings?
SEOmoz is good I've learned a lot from it. I'm on my 3rd month and now have 8 keywords in top 50 for one site and 1 keyword in top 50 for another. This is for Google US. For Bing and Yahoo! US however I am still not in the top 50 for anything. I have read elsewhere that meta-tag page words can be regarded by these engines as a spam signal. In my meta I have used competative keywords that are relevant to my content, some of which are in the body, but are not my actual targeted keywords as a red-herring to potential competitors. Also might be usefull for other smaller places that still use meta-tags. Could not appearing in BingHoo! have something to do with their alogrithms and the meta-tags? or is it an SEOmoz issue? I have another question also. The " / " after a domain name doesn't appear in my Firefox address bar (I think I did a 301 redirect), but when I copy and paste it into an entry box (e.g. for a link submission) it puts the " / " there at the end which I take off. Does this make any difference?
Moz Pro | | Zoolander0 -
Why Do Domain Link Metrics Differ in Keyword Difficulty Report vs OpenSiteExplorer
If anyone could shed some light on this that would be great. It seems as if the two tools are using different versions of the database?
Moz Pro | | belasco0