MOZ Pro - Page Grader Queries

[PeaSoupDigital]

Greetings!

I started a new position last week and the extremely supportive director promised to give me anything I required to make my job easier. Of course, my first port of call was MOZ Pro.

Having never used MOZ Pro before, I've just been getting to grips with it, fixing any pressing issues and giving the whole site a general SEO health check. A few fairly major issues have been flagged, which I'm in the process of fixing, and I'm currently putting our main landing pages through the MOZ Page Grader. After a little bit of tinkering, our iPhone 6 cases page has been graded B for the term 'iPhone 6 cases', but I have a few queries/concerns regarding some of the suggested fixes:

• **Avoid keyword stuffing in document **- The term 'iphone 6 cases' only appears thrice in the body, so it can't be that? The term, however, appears 23 times in the page's img alt tags. Could this be the issue? This is an ecommerce site that sells iPhone 6 cases, so the img alt tags are bound to contain that keyword. Each img alt tag is unique, so I don't really know what I can do here? "Show details for YouSave iPhone 6 0.6mm Clear Gel Case" is the example of the img alt tag of one of the products on that page, surely I can't remove the words 'iPhone 6 case'?
• Avoid too many internal links - MOZ suggests keeping the internal links to below 100 or, at a minimum, less than 100 links on the main navigation menu. I haven't counted, but I'd guess that page has more than 100 links, but not too many on the navigation menu. To me, this looks like a standard ecommerce page, with links to products and different pages via the top and bottom menus. Would I improve visibility if I reduced the amount of links by, say, reducing the number of products on the page? We currently have it set to 36, but can easily be reduced.
• Only One Canonical URL - We've put a fix in place for this issue and are just waiting for it to go live. For some reason rel=canonical tags have been duplicated on the majority of the pages. Like I say, this is being remedied, but I just wondered whether a duplicate tag negatively affect the page's visibility? The tags are identical and just point to the page they're on.

I think that's about it for now! Thanks in advance and keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Lewis (Andrew is the name of the director)

UPDATE Now I've sorted the rel=canonical issue, the pages are being graded A but still with the first two suggestions above.

[GPainter]

Hello there!

First off before I say anything more remember the grader is only a guide, its not a garuntee that if you get an A you're suddenly in the number 1 spot so like most guides a little bit of your own judgment needs to be filled in too.

You if your alt image tags all have to have IPhone 6 case then that's fine you can probably ignore that particular point. Don't forget though you can always be more descriptive e.g rather that just having iPhone case you can describe it a bit more.

100 links does sound a bit much even for an e-commerce shop, but again you can use your own judgment, if you think you need links to every phone instead of categories go for it but if you can reduce them might be worth doing it or it can get confusing. Always try to put the user first if you think it would make the users like easier to have your site designed a specific way do that as Google likes the user and so should you!

There are some guide about the grader here on Moz if you need some extra help on them. If you are unsure of things you can always compare to competitors see what they are up to but remember just because they are number one doesn't mean they are right: what I mean is they might not necessarily have the correct design choice etc. but it can be handy if you are a bit unsure.

You might also find this blog post super helpful - http://moz.com/blog/open-site-explorers-new-link-building-opportunities-section

Another handy bit of software I recommend is Screaming Frog, its also free up to 500 URLs so give that a go!

Hope some of that helps & clears it up for you.

[PeaSoupDigital]

Thanks for your time. I think you're right, I'm getting a little too hung up on the grader when, as you say, it's simply a guide.

Cheers!

[David-Kley]

As with most graders, they are only there to point you in the right direction, or to bring to light any areas of improvement. If you want additional resources, try some of these. We handpicked these to help people with SEO, and a lot of them link to articles on MOZ. http://www.webdesignandcompany.com/seo-resources