Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document

[Confused.com]

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

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

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.

[Confused.com]

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

[jobintourism]

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?

[Confused.com]

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?

[AWCthreads]

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.

[Confused.com]

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

[AWCthreads]

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?

[Confused.com]

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

[AWCthreads]

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.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

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