Discuss website design for ecommerce sites, useability, navigation and other development considerations. To get feedback on your t-shirt design(s) or website, please post a request in our Site Reviews and Design Reviews section here.
I'm trying to take advantage of as many relevant keyword phrases on my home page as possible without it coming across unnaturally to visitors. My site has limited tattoo shirts, tattoo tees, tattoo underwear, etc.... What is the conventional wisdom on repeating the same keyword (in my case "tattoo") in multiple phrases. I find conflicting points of view on this when I research online.
Anyone have words of wisdom on how to address this in a visitor-friendly way?
Last edited by Rodney; August 7th, 2006 at 10:24 AM.
Reason: removed url - feel free to add your URL to your signature
Thank you for your response. Keyword density/usage makes my head spin. It's complicated to think about, and I always second-guess my keyword usage.
I've also noticed the "Supplemental Pages" you speak about. I'm not sure how those got there. Perhaps the Google or ROR Sitemap scripts I've ran. Do those supplemental pages really hurt? Do they pose any security issues? I don't like the idea of having to go through and post no follow tags.
The site was initially launched Oct last year. I've changed the design a couple times since then.
I've also noticed the "Supplemental Pages" you speak about. I'm not sure how those got there. Perhaps the Google or ROR Sitemap scripts I've ran. Do those supplemental pages really hurt? Do they pose any security issues? I don't like the idea of having to go through and post no follow tags.
The site was initially launched Oct last year. I've changed the design a couple times since then.
the G-suppl pages can hurt you if YOU want these pages to come up on SE search results and they DONT. The g-SUPPL-index is not the G-main-index where you want to be.
security ???? not relevant.
no need for rel=nofollow, unless you are linking-out to porno sites... LOL just kiddin.
you do get penalized for "Keyword stuffing", the best way is to write your content for users. If repeating words too much turns off users, most likekly will get g-bot to throw up.
The g-SUPPL-index is not the G-main-index where you want to be.
Sorry, you lost me on this one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LucyRoberts
you do get penalized for "Keyword stuffing", the best way is to write your content for users. If repeating words too much turns off users, most likekly will get g-bot to throw up.
Right, but my question is this: If I just use "shirt" as a keyword, I compete against a gazillion other sites. If I put "tattoo shirt" it narrows things down considerably. Ideally, I would like to narrow all the products down on my site this way, by referring to each item as tattoo this or tattoo that, but I do worry about the illusion of keyword stuffing - both with search engines and visitors.
Ideally, I would like to narrow all the products down on my site this way, by referring to each item as tattoo this or tattoo that, but I do worry about the illusion of keyword stuffing - both with search engines and visitors.
G-supplemental-index pages are not as important as the G-main-index pages, thats why you dont see suppl-pages in most search results top 10-20.
If all your pages are important, you should try to get them out-of the supplemental index into the main-index.
as for the repeat words, there is no need to overkill. Make sure the user navigation is simple as possible and refer to your home page the same always (www-domain-com , not some to www-domain-com and others to www-domain-com/index.html), this will split you page value and you will be penalized for dupplicate content since they are the same page but 2 different URL's.....g-reads-it as 2 of the same page cause G-bot crawls URLS etc...
Nothing wrong with this type thing:
<h1>Tattoos</h1>
<p>These <b>Tattoos</b> are painless and read to wear. Describe/overview of products with links to the product pages....etc</p>
so then you go and make all your pages unique and different according to what you are about, t-shirts whatever. Make sure there is always a link back to your home page, g-bot hates getting lost in a supermarket ( a Clash Song ).
but on average, 1 year is not too long for new sites.
Do you have a sitemap ? if not,
Maybe head over to google sitemaps forum ( Google Employes Hang out there ),
there are some really down to earth peeps there that know lots about....
yes,
natural backlinks are good.
easy site navigation.
clean code (well, as clean as possible )
unique content
no dupps like www and no-www urls
i think that's about it really.
....i know in the past g-bot took forever to re-visited suppl-pages to re-evaluate them.... but i think with g-sitemaps it can be done quicker. Since one of the reasons for the g-sitemaps beta program is to help g-bot know what pages you want or not want indexed.
What is the conventional wisdom on repeating the same keyword (in my case "tattoo") in multiple phrases.
I think you should focus on your visitors and just keep "in mind" of the search engines.
You can easily include an introductory paragraph that talks about what your site has to offer. This will acquaint the customer with your site offerings and will include phrases that search engines might pick up on.
I think the key is always visitor first. Try to make your pages people friendly, then the search engine stuff will sometimes come naturally.
As long as you've done the research to find out what your customers are searching for, it can be easy to make your site people friendly, while keeping in mind the terms that they might use to find your products.
As you probably know, I've been to your site before . It looks much improved (navigation wise) over when I first saw it, and your way of including key phrases on the home page seems fine.
When I saw the site before, you had more "static" pages (.html), but it was harder to get to the shopping area. Now it seems like you can get to the shopping areas more easily, but the Miva cart pages aren't very "search engine friendly". I think there is a mod out there for Miva that will make your miva pages more static. I would suggest linking to those static pages instead so the search engines are more likely to spider all of your individual catalog pages.
Keyword Density 
