Owning all of the top 10 positions for one keyword
-
Hello,
I would like to know if it is considered bad by Google to rank every single spot in the top 10 with the same keyword?
All websites conver the same topic which this keyword, but have unique content. Those websites dont link to one another.
To be clear, I am not asking if it is a good idea because it will be harder to rank, find links etc. or because the last positions don't bring enough traffic. I really just would like to know if it against Google guidelines? Any thoughts or sources are greatly appreciated.
-
I agree with Tom and Lynn. It would be technically possible if you make sure there is no connection with the site, (who is, theme, content, different host/ ip range, etc), there would be no way for google to know one person is behind it.
But the amount of work to do that with white hat methods would be incredibly hard ( even with black hat it would be very hard), for a decent keyword worth ranking for..... I don't think its possible these days.
-
I can only go on my experiences I'm afraid, based on what I've seen and what I assume to be the right SEO practices.
I'd put a lot of money on this being the case - but hey, you could always ask Matt yourself!
-
Tom sums it up well.
In most if not all of such cases you should ask yourself if this is a 'normal' situation for a 'normal' search query and I think you will find that the answer is no. If the sites are all owned by the same person then it is certainly borderline if this situation is resulting in searchers finding enough variety in the results for them to say that google is returning the best results. Further to that, for any semi-competitive keyword it would be quite unusual for this situation to be happening so I would ask myself if it is worth the bother maintaining all these sites and tracking their rankings. Chances are that at some point the algo will mix things up and some (all?!) of the sites will move out of the top 10.
So, officially against the guidelines? (assuming no funny stuff) probably not. An un-natural situation that is unlikely to be very stable and/or worth the effort of maintaining it... probably.
-
Hello Tom Hall,
I think I wasn't clear. I didn't mean what you answered to. I meant:
10 domains with unique content on each one. Then linkbuilders get links to those sites to make those the ten to be ranked first on Google.
Basically, I meant what Tom Roberts answered to.
So, Tom, for you this should not be done because there is always a risk. Do you have sources for that opinion? That's what I would think also but I'm looking for more sources. For example, people that have been penalized or official Matt Cutts article or a study on several top 10s by a big name like seomoz or something like that.
Thanks a lot for your answers.
-
Hey there
If you had 10 individual websites with completely unique content that did not link together and each one offered a unique value, it could happen.
The unique value factor is key here - does each website not only have unique content on the matter, but also a new theme, style and way of portraying the message? If they do, I could see it happening.
But even then, I can't imagine Google would be happy if they found out all the sites belonged to one webmaster. It would take a manual review, but even if the WMT information was different, site themes were different, who.is registrar was different, backlink profile was different - basically everything was different, if they suspected it was the same person behind it all they would simply deindex the sites.
Hey, it's their search engine. We have quality guidelines and ideas of what we can or cannot do, but at the end of it there is a manual team who can penalise who they choose. This is a situation where I can imagine they would.
It's worth mentioning that I have seen a top 10 where 10 different websites which fell under one subsidiary trading name ranked for a pretty commercial keyword. So yes, it's possible.
Also worth pointing out is that 9/10 of those sites are now nowhere to be found.
-
Hi there,
This is a blackhat technique known as "Page Stuffing" it's probably not as easy to do these days due to Panda and Penguin, but the technique would involve ranking for one page (say a homepage) for a certain keyword and then duplicating the content so that each page would rank, pushing the competition down by up to 10 ranks so that one website is flooded for a certain search term.
Luckily, crawlers can now determine if a page is duplicated and just won't rank it and Google will penalize the offender.
Hope this helps.
Tom
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Primary versus secondary keyword
Hello, Can someone give a example of what primary and secondary keywords are and how to implement that in a sentence ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics2 -
Why does our main keyword keep dropping?
Hey Guys, We've seen an alarming drop in our main keyword for our website. Our biggest driver of traffic has always been the search term 'gifts for men' which we commanded the top spot for a while, but have always been in the top 4 for. Recently (in the last 3-4 months) we dropped to 6 and as of last night we dropped down to 9th. We still rank number 2 for 'gift ideas for men'. Both search terms point to this page: GIfts For Men Nothing onsite or technically has changed, and there is consistently new content in the form of products being added almost daily. We hit a manual action back in October of last year and I'm concerned that the toxic links (that we didn't create mind you) we disavowed may have been unnaturally boosting this page and now we're dropping significantly because they're gone. Any ideas on how we can curb this concerning trend? Thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheGreatestGoat0 -
Keyword Stuffing - Ecommerce websites
Hey Mozzers, Im undertaking a content audit and its going very well, we have written some better content for the first set of pages, it still needs some improvement but we have a good base and starting point from which we can make an SEO log and work on it over time. For the content I used the following formula for how many times to include a keyword Word Count / Length of Keyword. (eg. 600 words / 3 word keyword = 200). Then 1-4% of this (2-8 times). This has worked well for me in the past and has been a good base guide. I have ran the pages through Moz optimiser and every single page hit an A for keyword page optimisation. However many of the pages failed on keyword stuffing, which obviously has high priority. My dilemma is that, moz counts 15 as the cut off for keyword stuffing with the written text we have done really well with using it a set number of times. But these pages are product category pages. The keyword in the extreme of cases is listed 7-9 times in the side nav menu. 7-9 times in the product category listings. Take for example *** it is optimised for thermometers (i know it a tough single word keyword, and we have fairly modest aims with it, im using it here for example purposes). The word is used a good number of times within the article but is sent through the roof with the links to the sub categories. This page for example mentions the keyword 30 times. Can anybody suggest any ways to improve on this? Is how we display the categories in the nav bar and in the page excessive? As always many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP0 -
Outside Top 10 Even though - Higher Domain/Page Authority/Higher On Page Grade
Hi, Note: this is for Australian search results - for people in Perth.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HeadStud
The website is: http://thedj.com.au I am trying to optimise for the keyword 'perth wedding dj', but also 'wedding dj perth' and for some reason my website isn't even in the top 10 results. Here is what's weird though: My on-page grade with the On-Page Grader for the keyword 'wedding DJ perth' is an 'A' for http://thedj.com.au (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0135135hca) When checking the Keyword Difficulty in the Google Australia search enginge for 'wedding DJ perth' - there are 4 results which have a lower domain authority than 15 (in fact one result has a domain authority of 1) - http://awesomescreenshot.com/03f5134zd1 http://thedj.com.au has a Domain Authority of 23/100 and a Page Authority of 34/100. (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0bb5134tb8) So seeing as the page has gotten an A for on-page optimisation for the keyword 'wedding DJ Perth' and has a higher domain authority then many results in the top 10... why isn't it in the Top 10?! Bonus Question:
Why is DJ Avi showing up at the top of search results (Local listing) depsite the fact that:
a) He has no website to link to
b) No reviews for his listing
c) No keywords that I can see (other than the fact that he's a DJ)
Screenshot: http://awesomescreenshot.com/05151349cb Meanwhile our Local Places - Thanks,
Kosta
http://www.headstudios.com.au0 -
Keyword stuffing
Hi all. I'm working on this page - http://www.alwayshobbies.com/dolls-houses - for the term 'dolls houses'. It's not doing great at the minute (23rd in GUK) and I was wondering if it might be down to the volume of exact match keywords on the page (32). If not, does anyone have any other pointers? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Are these URLs too Keyword-packed?
Hi guys, Here is the URL: http://www.consumerbase.com/mailing-lists/dog-stores-mailing-list.html The target keywords are "Dog stores mailing list" and "Dog stores mailing lists" Does having "mailing-list" and "mailing-lists" in my URL hurt me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Should I remove Meta Keywords tags?
Hi, Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Keyword/Content Consistency
My question is: If you have a keyword that is searched more when it's spelled wrong then when it's spelled right - what do you do? Do you do the misspelled word or keep true to the spelling and say oh well to SEO? Also - Along the same lines of that question: What if you have a keyword that has a - in the middle of it. For instance: website and web-site (this isn't the keyword just an example). and drupal website is searched more then drupal web-site but wordpress web-site is searched more then wordpress website. Technically website is the correct spelling and way to write it, but people put web-site (again not the case in reality - just an example).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0