How do I avoid ranking well for keyword "in stock"

[jezzer300]

Hi,

You've probably guessed that I have a list of "in stock" products on the page. Some of my two word phrases that rank high are "in stock" and "ready despatch".

Apart from removing this status or replacing it with an image (using a random alt tag and file name!) is there another way to stop being ranked for these words.

Or, perhaps google will ignore these noise words knowing they aren't very useful... I wish...

What do you think.

Then again, if you look at amazon - their products are all listed with "Buy new" and "Free Super Saver Delivery"

[MadeWillis]

Placing content you don't want associated with the page it's on in an iframe could do the trick, however, this may not make sense for your situation.

[LifeinAsia]

Why worry about using a random alt image & file name? If I put on my tin foil hat, my guess is that if you try to do something like that, it will look like you are trying to hide something and end up with a penalty

Realistically, how many people are going to search for you with "in stock?" So does it really matter whether or not you rank for that term?

[jezzer300]

Hi.

You're right that it doesn't matter ranking for that search term.

What matters is google deciding the page is about "in stock" as well as the subject. Also Google's list of 2 word search terms for my page will probably give a higher priority to the more common phrases like "in stock".

Regards.

[g1smd]

You could have it as an image, but need to be sure that the image loading doesn't fail.

[LifeinAsia]

I would go the image route (not worrying about random alt tags or file names).

I suppose if you were really worried, you could use alt="[ProductName] in stock"- that way you might get a few hits from people searching for places that have that product in stock.

[Receptional Andy]

If you're ranking well for the generics but not for more desirable words, the problem is most likely not related to the generics at all and it would be a pointless task to remove such words from your pages. The issue is that your pages are perceived to be relevant only for words that are uncompetitive, and is not perceived to be relevant for desirable keywords.

This may be related to incorrect weighting of words on your pages (you may be giving too much focus to irrelevant words), weighting from links (you or others may link to your pages using the irrelevant words, and rarely using more descriptive anchors), or if you are looking at Google, it may be that there are problems with your pages that are harming relevancy for the words you want to rank for, leaving just the uncompetitive words (this could be true of various filtering mechanisms Google use).

If it's solely Google SEO you're concerned about, it might be worth trying to isolate the problem a bit more and then posting over in the Google Search Forum [webmasterworld.com] if you need more specific advice.

[jezzer300]

Thanks everyone.

It wasn't that I was ranking highly for the words I didn't want. It was the keyword checker that threw up "in stock" as being so popular, that caused me to look into things. I have to agree that once I gain relevant incoming links google will know more about what's important.

As for the "in stock" text, I will change consider changing it to an image. Knowing that google treats underscores in URL file names as stop words I'll try that on my image file name "no_stock.jpg".

Regards.

[MadeWillis]

You could simply add more content relating to the terms you wish to rank for. Think keyword density.

[edited by: MadeWillis at 8:48 pm (utc) on Oct. 7, 2008]

[pkpki]

looking for a better way...

[WannaKnowSEO]

Ummm, even more important than having the keyword / content on the page is the text in the links GOING to that page. If you're linking using the term "in stock" etc., you need to add rel="nofollow" to the a href, and then make sure you have the product name as the link without the nofollow tag. This'll help put your pagerank juice on the right terms.

[jezzer300]

After looking in depth at this issue, it isn't something to concern myself about.

It's best to ignore "in stock" and focus on the main keywords. I'll be treating "in stock" just as any other text, as part of the overall text to calculate the main keywords density etc.

Thanks for all your replies.