Keywords under product listing pages

[Trespass]

Hi guys,

One of my main concerns when we start redesigning the site Trespass.co.uk, is the current pages like this one http://www.trespass.co.uk/snow-sports/clothing/ski-jackets/womens-ski-jackets are bordering over optimisation.

Is this the case as each product listed in the url above has "womens ski jacket" under each product. If we have 50 products on each product listing page with the product name + type of product, ie. flora womens ski jacket, xyz mens waterproof jacket.

Are we over optimising the page for the main keywords by having them under each product?

Would that page be over optimised for womens ski jackets?

Thanks guys

[matbennett]

I've always been nervous about this on e-commerce sites.  I personally believe that it can be enough to tip the balance in to being seen as manipulative, although my experience is that by itself it isn't a problem.  The issue there is you never know what else is already counting against you.

It could be argued that such labels are useful to the user.  If that was a "Ski outerwear" category or similar then having labels such as "Women's ski jacket" would be good clarification.  Pushing the boundary a little you could even argue the case if it were just "Ski Jackets".  However it adds nothing for the user to have it when they are all the same.

Considering that keyword stuffing doesn't work any more the possible benefits of doing this then would seem to be close to zero.  The potential for triggering an alarm in a dark corner of Google is there though.  Weighing it up I would drop them when they match the category.

A smart approach might be to replace the "women's ski jacket" label with another useful piece of info when they all just match the category name. Hard to see what common fields you do have available.  Sizes would be useful, outer material (in the case of jackets) - not sure how easy it would be to change that based on category.  Looks like Magento.

[Trespass]

Hi Mat,

The current site is actually custom e-commerce which will soon be redesigned and built on Magento enterprise.

The site has great rankings already for the phrase "women's ski jackets" ranks number 2. My concern is future updates and whether Google will see it as over optimisation for "womens ski jacket"

The text below each product will be pulled from the title of the product field. ie. Flora womens ski jacket.

I'll check what the on page report ays from moz and take it from there. Just wanted to get some feedback and decide how the product listing pages should display product name and category.

Thanks for your reply.

[matbennett]

I think you are very right to look ahead.  That is why I try to look at things in terms of "does this add value / make sense if search was out of the equation".  I can't see that the text you point out currently does.

I suspect that your existing rankings for that term are down to a lot more than the repetition of that phrase on page.  Let's face it, Trespass gives off pretty convincing brand signals*. However it would be pretty easy to test the removal of that label on a couple of less critical categories to see if there was any impact before making any site-wide decisions.

Uhm, how to say this here... I'm not overly convinced by the Moz on page / on-site tools (Ready for a barrage of thumbs down for criticising he holy Moz).  I think they are a little dated in places and can put undue emphasis on some minor issues whilst overlooking bigger ones.  They're a really good starting point for smaller sites, those new to the web and those in less competitive niches.  I do though think that they have quite limited use for a site like Trespass.  Just add a pinch of salt to everything and that'll probably be about right.

*Google secretly uses the number of times a business appears on my credit card bill as a brand indicator

[Trespass]

H Mat,

I'm gonna leave it alone and keep the current format as it works well. Guess I'll have to wait and see what updates Google has in store and cross that bridge when it happens.

I agree that the on page tools aren't exactly accurate. In fact I once questioned this and got no response. I think over optimisation for a page targeting 1 specicific keyword is easy to do if you follow everything in the on page report.

Still loving moz though

Haha are you a fan of trespass then? You should check out Nevisport.com which is also owned by trespass. Big brands at great prices.

Kind regards

Robert

[matbennett]

"If it aint broke...."  Hard to argue against that!    I'd test removing it on a category though... I'm like that

I'm off to do some window shopping then.