Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Have a client - Massive offline awareness, 10,000s of back links, huge traffic on company relates searches (150,000 visitors from Google last month) but because the site is not optimised very little other traffic (10,000 visitors on niche phrases).
I’m optimising the site but treading carefully. I want to add title attributes to their menus. For example:
Green Widgets
- Cheap Green Widgets
- New Green Widgets
Red Widgets
- Cheap Red Widgets
- New Red Widgets
Blue Widgets
- Cheap Blue Widgets
- New Blue Widgets
The links are to Green, Cheap Green, New Green etc.
Would this be keyword stuffing or seen as over optimising? Should the fact the site is close to being an authority site influence your answer?
Any comments / thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
Donal
I’m optimising the site but treading carefully. I want to add title attributes to their menus.
Donal - Title attributes aren't likely to help you much, if at all, in search. I don't think any of the engines actually looks at them.
I sometimes use them as extra messages in text links to help guide user expectations, but I think of them as display elements, not as optimizing elements... and I use them with restraint. Too much repetition of anything is going to dull the senses... and give you a "stuffed" feeling.
A test I apply to written copy is try reading it out loud. If a phrase sounds redundant, chances are it is.
Green Widgets
- Cheap Green Widgets
Regardless of whether title attributes are weighted by engines or not, I'd avoid this much repetition here.
Maybe try something like...
Green Widgets
- Cheap Widgets for Your Garden
This won't help you rank in this case, because it's not likely the title attributes are used... but using words naturally will most likely help you in the long run.
As for the repetition of "Widgets" in your links...
Green Widgets...
Red Widgets...
Blue Widgets
...this is a question I asked about 5 years ago. We had a discussion then that might be helpful, but I'd love to see the topic revisited, especially now that some of us are older and wiser ;) ....
Avoiding excessive repetition in global text links
"Widget" really belongs in every link, but it may be seen as spam
[webmasterworld.com...]
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:30 am (utc) on June 13, 2007]
Judging by the number of MFA (made for Adsense) sites I saw yesterday with roughly 100 auto generated keyword-stuffed menu links going to pages of Adsense blocks and no content, Google couldn't care less.
/sarcasm off
And is still a relevant issue that probably has never been totally resolved.
>>but I'd love to see the topic revisited, especially now that some of us are older and wiser
Me too, especially since those patent application papers on phrase based indexing make reference to over-use of related phrases on pages and even give numbers.
One of the examples in that old thread (which I still do remember) was about real estate/regional sites and location phrases, and I wonder if that's being looked at in a different light today than it was a few years back. True, the MFA sites are gluttonous in their use of phrase stuffed navigation, but wouldn't it stand to reason that they'd want to be addressing those issues at some point?
When a site has achieved a very high status -- not potentially but actually -- then it does look like the rules do change. I'm talking about PR 8 for the Home Page and SiteLinks for the brand name search, that kind of thing. Such highly successful sites do seem to have a "get out of jail free" card -- up to a point, at least -- because Google's users would not be happy if they had trouble finding such web properties.
That said, I do see URLs from very big sites getting nailed with the -950 situation and so on. So keyowrd stuffing is something to be attentive to, no matter who seems to get away with it.
Lately I've been noticing that some words seem to be semantically "exempt" from kw stuffing penalties within a given market because their repetition is almost unavoidable -- but most words do not fall into that category.
...Freedonia Widget News has a directory of widget based businesses and organisations...
Perfect example where best options can be hard to pin down. In such a directory, you might have a menu page listing the widget-sellers by community. I see many such sites, some apparently doing OK, with geo menu pages like this...
Bigsville Widgets
Cartertown Widgets
Diggland Widgets
Freedonia Corners Widgets
North Place Widgets
Podunk Widgets
Smallsville Widgets
If SEO were not a consideration, would we include "widgets" in every link?
My tendency would be to strip out all the "widgets" repetitions, and then add more "widgets" emphasis elsewhere on the page, so the page looks like this....
Blah blah Elbonia widgets blah blah widgets.Bigsville
Cartertown
Diggland
Freedonia Corners
North Place
Podunk
Smallsville
The loss of "widgets" in nav anchor text might well affect downstream pages, though. Or, it might be that "widgets" is so overly repeated that "widgets" in the nav is not giving that much of a boost anyway, and the reps are hurting the page as a whole.
Or, maybe such repetitions are so common in menus that Google doesn't mind. In a geo list like the above, uniform treatment certainly makes more sense than varying each link.
I've observed, in the past anyway, that Yahoo has appeared to be less tolerant of this type of stuffed geo menu than Google.
But, for me, the decision to change the above on a site that's perhaps working is not an easy one.
And, to toss in another question, does Google's phrase-based analysis behave differently in nav text than in plain vanilla paragraph copy? How does the patent suggest such a repetitive list might behave? Is each geo modifier of "widgets," over a certain threshold, seen as adding to the number of bad phrases?
Correction - it's in section [0145] of one of the papers, they do take note of and store whether occurrences are located in titles, headings, footers, body text and sidebars, ads - and way more, at least for the first partition. It stands to reason that navigation would be anticipated to be sidebar, footer or top of page but I don't think they're telling weights either positives or negatives.
That's IF the phrase system is being used, I believe there are signs that it is, at least to some degree.
[edited by: Marcia at 1:28 am (utc) on June 14, 2007]
Does phrase analysis see this such a page, with "widgets" in the links, as a page stuffed with an inappropriate number of extra targets phrases, over the spam threshold? I'm thinking it certainly would if those phrases weren't links.
This is probably more likely to happen in a directory than in the Red Widgets, Blue Widgets, Green Widgets kind of nav, where I'd think the problem, if it's a problem, would be too much close repetition.
I have a homepage with a list of internal links in exactly the same style as Robert's penultimate message, i.e.
Bigsville Widgets
Cartertown Widgets
Diggland Widgets
Freedonia Corners Widgets
North Place Widgets
Podunk Widgets
Smallsville Widgets
NONE of these two-word phrases appear anywhere else on the page except in alt text for an image-based nav menu. I'm pretty sure there's no damage being done by this, though it would be interesting to see whether removing the reps makes any difference. The site in question is not an authority site (homepage has PR4).
All "widgets" are definitely not created equal. If it ain't broke, don't even try to fix it. But if it is broke, then at least consider this possibility.
Bigsville Widgets
Details
Cartertown Widgets
Details
Diggland Widgets
Details
Freedonia Corners Widgets
Details
North Place Widgets
Details
Podunk Widgets
Details
Smallsville Widgets
Details
If Google figures out the theme of your site, all the extra "widgeting" is not helpful in navigation. It's not particularly natural, either, is it? Do either Google or your visitors need the repetition to know what your site is about? Are they lost without it?
I usually get skeptical of websites which "widget" ad nauseam in the navigation/anchor text, because I know the MFA crowd does it all the time. The more there is, the more ridiculous it looks. You really don't need the extra "widget" except in the page title.
Also, besides the aesthetics, it wastes space in your navigation header/footer, or clogs up your nav column (left side).
I agree with Tedster about authority sites on this. The thing we need to be aware, too, is that if one day your site loses some PR, and you still got all those "juiced" navigation links, you could be in for a rude awakening. PR is not set in stone; nor is authority.
Looking ahead, in the future, I still think one day Google is likely to think less favorably about stuffing. I mean, in a few years, after it's dealt with lots of big issues, it's going to keep busy and play with other, smaller issues, including stuffing.
With this expectation, I'm being conservative in current web design. What we could get away with five years ago, we can't anymore. What will Google be like five years from now? What won't we be able to get away with then?
p/g
