Authority Website or Spam?

[Dan01]

Let’s say a guy has a blog where he has been tracking the price of fencing material (or whatever). Every day he collects data concerning the price of the material and writes about it.

The same words appear in his blog entries every day: Chain link fence, wood fencing, bricks, dollars, feet… Basically he is describing the cost of fencing, every day.

Some may consider him an authority on the subject because they can get the current prices for fencing from various vendors. But a search engine might think it is spam. He continually uses the word fence, linear feet, brick…

Is he keyword stuffing or an authority?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

If he is writing honest content for his readers then that cannot be keyword stuffing. I would hesitate to call him an authority however. Blogs are seldom authoritative.

[tedster]

You said he collects the data and writes about it. That writing will be semantically distinctive every day. If there's real value there, he'll have traffic and regular users. Not spam, neither to users nor to Google.

Whether it becomes an authority or just a hobby site depends on whether there are many people who care about his kind of fence.

[Dan01]

Thanks for responding! This is something I bet SEs deal with.

I used fencing, but it could be gold, silver, import duties or whatever. The values change, but the words like ounces, percent etc don't. Google will see them every day - even though the writer didn't intend to "stuff" his content with them.

You said he collects the data and writes about it. That writing will be semantically distinctive every day. If there's real value there, he'll have traffic and regular users. Not spam, neither to users nor to Google.

I agree with you. I have heard a lot about keyword stuffing over the years, but I think it can be difficult to design an algorithm to distinguish between the two.

Whether it becomes an authority or just a hobby site depends on whether there are many people who care about his kind of fence.

I read a lot of stuff that is of no interest to most people. LOL I realized this when I was reading an article by Vanessa Fox. Very interesting stuff, but how many people read it. If my dad read it he would probably consider it no interest to him.

BeeDee - I think he would be an authority on fence prices (perhaps not a "how to make a fence"). I would hope his site ranks above the fence company's site, especially since he probably includes their pricing in his blog.

The bottom line is: Who cares if each article has the words "linear foot" 30 times. I think the keyword stuffing criteria should be of little weight.

[tedster]

I think keyword repetition in the content is of little weight these days, too. In the days of crude text-matching algorithms, raw count or density was the first line of defense. With today's more complex semantic algorithms, not so much.

Now, if you overly repeat a keyword in a more critical element - especially in anchor text on the page - that can be more problematic. But even that factor seems to have less weight these days.

[Dan01]

Yes, I agree Ted. And I hope we are right.

[Robert Charlton]

I'd be more concerned with whether he's doing anything more than listing the daily prices.

If he's writing about the data, then ultimately he's going to get into a richer vocabulary set that might involve anything from material cost and supply chain issues to the development of new technologies. Google will most definitely track those semantic associations.

If he's simply publishing a list over time, though, then that spare data may perhaps be seen as "thin" and ultimately become vulnerable to a kind of internal duplication problem. The term "monotony" might apply... and user traffic is likely to be a more significant factor than semantic variation.

[Dan01]

Yes Robert. Like discussing things that would affect the price in the future. A raw material shortage or something like that.

Also, tables of data help, but I don't think they are as SE friendly.

And then there is the widget question, or generating a dynamic page. I don't know how well SEs see dynamic pages. I have noticed that dynamic pages do hold quite a few of the top SERPS.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

BeeDee - I think he would be an authority on fence prices

Yes he probably would be but I thought that you meant an authority site in Google's opinion.

[walkman]

Spam it isn't it. Especially he writes it daily.

[SanDiegoFreelance]

Depends on the reaction of other sites on the internet to his content. Are they linking to him? Are they quoting him? Are newspapers quoting him?

If they are he is an authority in the eyes of the search engine although for him it may be a hobby.

If they are not and people are paying attention to other sites for that content. Then he is either boring or spam - in either case the search engines don't want him on the top of the search engines. I would say he is not spam if he is not using spam methods.

Many times a hobby site will out rank actual authority because the authority is boring while say a hobby satire site is funny and interesting and makes one think.

On the between the lines subject on keyword repetition. Once the a keyword has been used more than other words on the site - even if the percent of usage is rather low - I honestly don't believe increasing its usage helps. If google's webtools lists fencing as a significant keyword for the site then the keyword has been used enough. If it does not I would tend to get rid of the useless keywords on that list to throw off would be competitors instead of going for a specific keyword density which they would copy.

[Dan01]

If he's writing about the data, then ultimately he's going to get into a richer vocabulary set that might involve anything from material cost and supply chain issues to the development of new technologies.

I have been thinking about what you said. I agree, but then again if you want to be the authority on something, it may be better to not spread yourself to thin and try to cover all aspects of fencing - like fence building etc. You would not want to lose "fence pricing" in the serps because the SEs think you are about building a fence.