Can Keyword-Stuffing on a Single Page Penalize My Entire Site?

[Travis-W]

Hi forum!  I want to improve my internal linking through adding keyword-rich anchor text to my search results pages (my site has an internal search engine for products).

For example, if I were a shoes store, my product search engine results are currently:
-Running
-Hiking
-Walking
-Track

and I want to make them actual keyword-terms by changing them to:
-Running Shoes
-Hiking Shoes
-Walking Shoes
-Track Shoes

This creates a problem - the keyword "shoes" is stuffed on the page.

I don't care how well these dynamic search results pages appear in search, only the actual product pages. Is it okay to keyword stuff on these pages, or would it penalize my entire site?

[josh-riley]

Wanting to use long tail keywords is not really the same thing as keyword stuffing. You're just using anchor text to highlight the long tail keywords ("hiking shoes") that best describe your product vs. stuffing a page to an un-natural level with just the word "shoe" in an obvious attempt to rank for the term.

So I wouldn't fear stuffing penalties, although...depending on how crawl-able your new search page results will be, then be prepared that it can change what page ranks for what keywords unless you use a robots.txt or something to block/control search engines from accessing it. Ex: dynamic pages competing against the actual product pages for rankings for the long tail keywords.

And that's not the same thing as a penalty, that's just possibly what can happen when you make changes to content.

[eli.boda]

I wouldn't worry about these pages being indexed. Google should automatically pick up on the URL parameters as they do with all my ecommerce clients. There are occasions where certain parameters have to be removed manually through webmaster tools, but Google is getting pretty good at deciphering this stuff on their own

[josh-riley]

I've had it happen to me, so it's a matter of if you want to take the risk in the first place and wait it out and hope you like the outcome.

[anthonydnelson]

I absolutely agree with Andrea here and recommend blocking Google from indexing your search result pages.

[Travis-W]

If I block my search results pages from being indexed by Google, will these new anchor text changes have any effect?

[josh-riley]

Not ranking in Google won't touch what results you can serve up within your own site; as you mentioned you have your own internal search function/search engine and that's why you wanted to create this in the first place.

Also, not having them indexed in Google means they won't compete w/ your regular product pages for rankings in Google. Of course, this is assuming that I understood your goal correctly.

[Travis-W]

Hmm. Well, our main goal in the anchor text changes is to give a boost to our product pages rankings. We currently don't see very good results from either, so I am not sure if they are competing.

To rephrase my second question, if a page is not indexed in Google (probably via a tag), does link anchor text on that page have any merit?

[josh-riley]

OK, that's different from what I was getting from your original post (which is why it never hurts to double check). I understood it as you wanted improve your internal linking and do anchor text to help your INTERNAL search results w/in your on-site search function/search engine.

Keep in mind that too perfect anchor text can actually hurt you, too: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172839/Google-Penguin-Update-Impact-of-Anchor-Text-Diversity-Link-Relevancy

Creating dynamic product pages will compete with your regular product pages in rankings for those shared keywords unless you no index them (not the same thing as no follow). No index means that Google can follow the link but shouldn't index it but you want page rank to be passed along to links.

I'd consider reading up on the subject of no index to confirm your comfort level with how to do this - especially since I'm trying to interpret what you want and I may not be correct and don't want to possibly hinder your goals

http://www.seoboy.com/the-differences-between-noindex-nofollow-and-robotstxt-file/

http://eduardblacquiere.com/non-indexed-page-pass-pagerank/

[Travis-W]

Nice article on 'Money Keyword' Anchor text.

All of our search results links' anchor text is unique and we have over 60,000 of these pages. I am pretty sure they will be diversified enough. They are all somewhat specific, so I am pretty certain they will not match exactly what the user searches for in Google most of the time.

Another question that has come up.
For example, 2 of my pages are competing in google: A product page ranking 4th, and a dynamic search results page ranking 5th.

Would no-indexing the search results page make the product page shoot up higher than 4, or is the purpose of removing competition just to guide the user more specifically where I want them?

As long as I use the the noindex tag in a robots.txt file correctly, do I have your blessing? Thanks so much!