Keyword stuffing when brand includes keyword

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi

If you have managed to combine brand name with primary target keyword do you still need pay attention to on page keyword stuffing ? since one would expect plenty of brand references in the body copy ?

Or is it still best to reduce instances of the keyword aspect ?

For example if site is called 'Franks Service Centres' and you have lots/too many instances of 'service centres' in the body copy a/c to MA on-page grader, should you reduce some instances of the kw ?

All Best
Dan

[SilverDoor]

Hi Dan,

I think that people often get too tied up with things like keyword stuffing.

In the way that I see it, if you write, unique, interesting, natural, content then you won't need to worry about things like keyword stuffing.

The only time keyword stuffing occurs is when people have tried to write for search engines and not for the user. It wouldn't be natural to have the name of your company in the body copy lots of times.

If you read the content and it flows naturally then don't change anything. However, if it reads unnaturally then change it and make it natural.

Hope this helps

Thanks

SilverDoor

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi Silver Door

thanks for your comments , yes thats how i see it too but the kw aspect of the brand word is included quite a few times in the copy but without the main brand component. So it does read well an make sense but Moz page grader is reporting it occuring 13 times on the page which does seem a high to me even though reads fine/is natural

Cheers

Dan

[ProductPearson]

Hi Dan, hope you are well.

SEO is moving on these days and Google is focusing much more on original content, with longform and lots of content per page. If you can naturally add content to your page, you can encourage your relevant keyword to appear in that multiple times without it appearing as stuffing, whilst still including it for relevance and potential small boosts in search rankings.

[Dan-Lawrence]

Good thanks! How are you doing ?

the page in question is a Home Page for a clients corporate site so only 200 words on page max hence why im concerned, although it does all read well and natural, hence the conundrum, think should maybe delete some instances just to err on the side of caution since client doesnt want to add/much to the copy since very happy as it currently reads. Long form would dilute the corporate messaging. As a side note the kw is in the domain too since part of brand so should hopefully mitigate any perceived 'stuffing'

All Best
Dan

[Chris.Menke]

Dan,

I think that you've got to watch out for that. Over optimization, excessive exact match anchor text, exact match keywords, and exact match domain names were the downfall of many online businesses since 2012.  You'll probably be fine on-page, so long as you remain conservative with keyword use. Off page, steer clear of getting links from low quality sites.

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi Chris

Yes absolutely! different ball game off page

Although once again, if kw included in the brand name (which can be verified by also being in the domain and Google+ company page/publisher etc etc) should prevent any kw rich anchor texts being considered link spam since the anchor text will also be brand name, SO LONG as it contains the full brand name in the anchor text and not just the kw aspect in the anchor text.

I hope so anyway, what do you think of that ?

All Best

Dan

[Chris.Menke]

Of course, it's hard to say for sure.  If your threshold to avoid a filter were somewhat lower than others', I doubt it would be significantly lower.  So long as you keep things above board, I'd bet you'll be fine.

[David-Kley]

I think it makes sense instantly once you read through your content. Of course if you have the phrase "service centers" all over the page you will get hit by Google. When you read through what you have, the name should be used where it makes the most sense. What wouldn't make sense (to a search engine or user) is stating "Franks Service Centres does this" "Franks Service Centres does that" "Franks Service Centres is awesome" "Franks Service Centres is the best"

Instead, maybe go into details about the services offered at the sevice centers, rather than just stating what it is over and over, talk about what it does.

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks for your input David!

The copy does conform to that, it all reads naturally.  It hasnt been written with any seo in mind and im about to edit for seo but think good to remove a few instances and change copy

[BruceA]

Hi

We have a similar problem, but as a retail store selling Brands.  Often Moz shows us keyword stuffing possible problems, but as the brand name is in the product title, it is really hard to drop the level of mentions.

Example: XXX Brand and Keyword.  Product XXX  Trousers.  Image XXXX-150011409900-F.jpg

If we then create lovely natural content using the Keyword a few times, we are up to 20 keywords before we even add the content tree.

A tricky problem for Brand based keywords, but in very niche markets the Brand is critical as part of the end user search.

We are not 100% sure about how to deal with this ourselves, a few experiments have removed key search terms and we have had to put them back in as the impressions in GWT dropped 75% without them.

Any other experiences and possible solutions would be really useful

Bruce

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks for your comment Bruce, interesting to hear

I would really love to think & would truly hope that Google was clever enough to not apply filters to pages such as yours since its pretty unavoidable, and even misleading, to not include the brand multiple times on a brand specific product page.

Its sounds like (if i understand you correctly) from your experiments, that Google is preferring brand kw inclusion if you are losing impressions by removing brand kw instances.

All Best

Dan

[BruceA]

Hi Dan

From what we can see so far, taking out the Keywords dropped impressions over the course of a week.  We put them back in but reduced the instances as per Moz page checker.  We are still over the recommended level of keywords, so we will see what happens over the next period.

Due to various issues that we cannot resolve via normal SEO techniques we are rebuilding our online site, but we are planning to reduce the amount of products on a page and removing Alt image tags where possible.  We used the correct Alt image tag as a way to catalogue the images internally but this doubles the Keyword count instantly

What we have found with Brand searches, that customers find us via text searches or via image searches, as they might not know the style code, but know the brand and will click through via the image.

It would be great if we could register the nature of our business with Google in a way which is not so subtle as them having to work out we are retailers and this is a shopping site.

Will keep the post updated with new results as the appear.

Bruce

[Dan-Lawrence]

Good info cheers Bruce !

Pls do keep me/this thread in da loop im sure of general interest to everybody here and certainly of specific interest to me since, whilst my post is originally in regard to a client, i am soon to relaunch my very out of date online store, so very interested in any findings you may like to share

On a side note, when you say image searches do you mean on Google or on your site search ? If Google image search do you use some sort of a frame breaker plugin to bring them straight through to the site from the image ? (i dont know of one off hand but have very recently heard of them so thought worth mentioning)

All Very Best

Dan

[ProductPearson]

If Google catches you doing the frame breaker, you will be blacklisted.

[Dan-Lawrence]

really ? cheers for the heads up if so but have heard of reputable peeps using and recommending it

[BruceA]

Hi Dan

Google Images, we don't use any plugin as this is not needed.  Google is excellent at picking up new content and images from our site, hence why we ensured the Alt Tags where used properly, using more narrative in the Alt Description to properly paraphrase the content of the image.  The image links are already in the crawl results.Normally images appear on Google Images in about 48 hours after we post themBruce

[ProductPearson]

He means when you click an image on Google images, that it navigates to the website instead of opening in Google Image's search. (I think)

[Dan-Lawrence]

i did