Will ranking be improved or hurt by changing 1/5 of part numbers to key words

[Wales]

Note:  I bold major content for your quick skim for your convenience.  Does this help you decide if its a fit for your response?

My site has been devastated by the Panda or unknown reasons so I need to think outside the box.

I distribute industrial products with average brand recognition.  I only have about 5 competitors selling this same brand.    My  other brand competitors are billion dollar companies that  pay a lot for PPC and have sites with 10 times the product offering.

Since my brand recognition is not as important as the function.I'm thinking about changing the part numbers to reflect function.   This will affect about 1/5of the parts ( about 500 out of 3,000 parts)  .   My concern is will ranking be hurt or helped by changing these parts with these strong keywords in front of the part for such a high % of the site.  The strong keywords cost $10 for a chance at a $200 sale with repeat business.

Example: Current part is: 10-10  Black Plastic;  which is a Big Red Truck with my brand part # as 10-10 and comes in different colors of plastic. .    Keyword is Big Red Truck.   I would like to put my manufactures brand in the description.    My same brand competitors sell 10,000 parts and my logic is that if I have the brand in 1/5 of my parts ranking would be improved because of the % of brand per the site versus my same brand competitors..

So I would change the part # to : **Brand  10-10-Black Plastic  Big Red Truck **

In conversation I would state the part as:

Brand: 18 characters, Part #: 8, Material:12, Keyword: 27

If the keyword should be first I could change to: K,B P,M.   Which is recommended?

[DanDeceuster]

That's a bit complicated and hard to follow without a link to the site in question. I have experience in this field so I'll share what I think.

I work with a sprinkler store online that sells parts of other brands. Those brands have their own online stores as well, he is just a dealer. However, those parts have unique model numbers. The search volume isn't for say "digital garden hose timer" so much as it is for "[brand name] [part number] timer" for example. If people are looking for a specific part, they will identify it by part number more often than not, rarely by just a description.

So if your 10-10 part number is universal and people look for the 10-10 black plastic part, great, you're good. If those are part numbers only you are using for internal tracking purposes, drop it and use the part number from the manufacturer that is searched more or include descriptive keywords in the titles.

I think your first step should be to decide what your keywords are. Are you going after searches that include part numbers? Searches that have descriptive keywords about the part? Or both? Once you figure that out, then figure out search volume and competition for them, you should be able to prioritize keywords for each part and then adjust your titles accordingly. Hope that answers the question you were asking.

[Wales]

Thanks for your prompt reply.   I'm including more background information but the question below probably can be answered  without it.  I did some searching before I replayed.  The  complete part numbers are the manufactures part numbers.  They show up on searches but the manufacturer is the only listing.   This 10-10 part is an assembly that only VAD's selll.  The manufacture has the part # only  and selles the component parts and we are a VAD and purchase the components and assemble and sell it.

The manufacturer also makes units ( usually sold to OEM) that are completely assembled, less cost, higher need  The manufacture sells about 200,000/yr each of the major part 2 parts  at $14.00 each and for the assblies we are discussing, maybe 100 in the last 5 years. at $300 each.    I am usually the only one on the planet that pays for PPC for the exact part # opf the high volume part  and it only cost $.20 and the average sale is $100

So, if I use the exact part # in the title I would get the replacement part business for the 100 in the filed when they fail .

Question: ** Since these low volume part #'s are so rarely searched will it help ranking or hurt ranking to have 1/5 of my part numbers******  with these strong keywords in front of the part for such a high % of the site**..  Will it be viewed by the engines as trickery.**

[DanDeceuster]

Search engines do not view keywords as trickery. Keyword stuffing is what they are concerned with. For example, if your part was Widget 123 that is Red and does XYZ, then this is a bad title:

Red Widget 123 for XYZ | 123 Widget- Red for XYZ | Red XYZ Widget- 123 | Widget 123- Red- XYZ

That is keyword stuffing. That's repeating the same thing over and over in a different order. A good title would simply be:

Red Widget #123 for XYZ

That's it. No trickery there. If you make your titles include both the part number used by the manufacturer and a keyword rich description of the product, you will be doing just fine.

[Wales]

Thank you for the response.  I have another related question.  My best selling part

is Red-Widget-123.  If I search for this I come up #3.  The manufacturer is 1 and 2.

If I search for Redwidget123 my competitor comes up.   In another queston an " authority" told me to make the tile page Red-widge-123 /Redwidget123.  Since you state this is stuffing how do I get better ranking for when customers mistakenly do not add the dashes.

[DanDeceuster]

red-widget-123 is treated exactly the same was as red widget 123. No need to worry on the difference between dashes and spaces as google treats them the same. My hunch with your product as with all other products I have ever managed is that search volume for redwidget123 is non-existent. If someone is looking for the nordictrack x7 black incline trainer for example, not a soul searches blackinclinetrainerx7. I don't think you will have a problem there and should not optimize for any possible spelling/typing mistakes because they happen so infrequently. If this non-dashed and non-spaced term is searched frequently, there is no harm in adding it to your title as it is all one word and not repeating the same phrase again.