Big tag cloud = Keyword stuffing?

Would that be spamming?

[eflouret]

I'm planning to ad a page at my site with a relatively big tag cloud (200 - 300 terms).

Would that raise a spam flag because of keyword stuffing?

It is for an graphics and illustration tutorials site, so keywords will be somehow unrelated (draw this, paint that, etc.). None of them will be money related, though.

Please, it is not a usability question. I understand that many consider tag clouds something irritating. It is just a search engine related question.

Thanks in advance

Enrique

[vincevincevince]

I think you should add REL="NOFOLLOW" to the links as you aren't really using them for navigation (?) - or - at least, add it to the smallest items.

[eflouret]

Thanks, it's a good idea.

But that doesn't solve the keyword stuffing problem, in case that a cloud tag could be considered that way.

I guess that I will try it and hope it won't be considered spamming.

Perhaps I'm reading too much about penalties and worrying with no reason.

Enrique

[BigDave]

Uh, is keyword stuffing your reason for doing this?

Or, as Google puts it in their Guidelines:

Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

If a human reviewer from google could look at that and see a usability reason for what you did, then I would not be too concerned about a penalty. If it looks to a human like it is keyword stuffing, then I would be more concerned.

Even if you are keyword stuffing, I would not be too concerned about a penalty since you say that they are not money words. What would concern me more is that it would water down the results for that page, and possibly send a visitor to that page when you have a more approprate one for them.

[eflouret]

No, Keyword stuffing is my principal fear.

The main reason for that page is to offer different alternatives for searching my site.

I have over 1500 tutorials and obviously I can show 10 or 15 per page.

Having a tag cloud can "help" visitors get to know what's hidden in my site by watching different keywords. The nice thing about the tag cloud is that the most populated keywords are in a bigger size. Plus I can play with type and colors to provide a more visually apealing design.

This is an isolated page and I'm not promoting it as a value page. It won't have adwords inside. And my site doesn't depend on it.

It is almost the same case as the new "PIXEL ADS" that are mostly useless but many enjoy watching and clicking them.

Plus, my visitors are mostly artists that can find many ideas by watching these keywords.

Tag clouds exist in lots of sites, but I don't know if there is any one this size (200-300 linked keywords).

Enrique

[stu2]

What's a tag cloud?

[BadSense]

[43things.com...]

That's a good example of a tag cloud.

[Frequent]

Try throwing a dot com after your two word combo. Just one option but very easy to implement and free.

Freq---

[eflouret]

I like www.tagcloud.com homepage example. It has a better type and color handling.

FREQUENT: Tagcloud.com only works with rss feeds and I need to "tag" all my database. Thanks for the tip anyway.

Update: after making some tests, I will keep the tag cloud on a category level instead of a site level.

Site level tag cloud turned out to be really big, even for my "non-usable ;-)" purposes.

On the other side, category level tag cloud is relatively small to be considered keyword spamming and it is more usable.

Thanks for the input and happy new year!

Enrique