Is thumbnail text crawlable/lists of product names considered as normal copy in terms of keywords?

[LawrenceNeal]

On a page that lists products (thumbnail text repeating the same word when you sell variations of the same thing) and also has copy at the bottom, are the product names crawlable? Is it better to avoid repeating the keyword in the copy? Can you get penalised for it?

[TomRayner]

Hi Lawrence

Unless it is hidden by a frame or javascript, I would assume that the copy would be crawlable.  You can actually check for yourself by using the SEO Browser. It will return the page as Google sees it, so you can check the copy there.

It would be wise not to stuff the keyword on the page, particularly if the product page isn't that rich with content.  If there is a lot of content on the page, then a couple of extra inclusions shouldn't hurt, but be watchful.  You can get penalised for over-optimisation and thin content if you really over do it, so take care.

Hope this helps.

[LawrenceNeal]

Hi Tom,

It was one of my colleagues that asked the question on my behalf. To clarify, we are actually aware the text is crawlable, what I was wondering is whether the text in title tags on thumbnails would be treated (in terms of exact match keyword weight) the same/grouped together with copy between span tags, for instance.

We have a category page with 75 instances of 'example' and 'examples'  including title tags on thumbnails, anchor text and sales/seo copy (and 325 instances of the keyword in the source code)

So the question is, would we be better to make the thumbnail text uncrawlable to avoid over-optimisation penalisation?  Just a thought

Thanks for you reply.