Header - Keyword Overuse?

[Finges]

Been working through the DSCC, got to day 8...

Got a question on Headings. Let say I've got a pretty formulaic layout/template for each post page... for example:
Trying to rank for: best pizza restaurant
Title - Best places to eat pizza - Top restaurants to get a hot pie!
h1 - Best place to eat pizza- Top restaurants to get a hot pie!
h2 - Best pizza restaurants in chicago
h3 - Tonys pizza in chicago
h3 - bobs pizza in chicago
h2 - Best pizza restaurants in new york
h3 - steves pizza in new york.

etc... from a content/theme/ease of use perspective the heading layout makes some sense... but would I get penalized for over using 'pizza restaurant' in every H2? Or essentially the word Pizza in every Header? Or am I overthinking it?

 

[Calamari]

Yes, using pizza restaurant or even just pizza too many times will get you into trouble. This is especially if it's in all the H tags.

I assumes it's also in the title, sidebar, and text as well. And then you will probably end up with some links with those words in there too. It all adds up to an over optimization penalty.

You're going to want to bring down the use if those words substantially.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I agree with Calamari in general but with a difference in the specifics.

In my own experience and by observing other sites in various fields, it seems that you only harm your chances of ranking for the specific phrases that are over-used, which is why LSI is such a great technique to dodge this keyword stuffing issue.

Will you rank for "pizza" in your example? No, even if it wasn't insanely competitive and localized, because of its over-use. I don't think you've over-used "pizza restaurant." But let's assume you did...

Here's an example I never forgot. I ranked #2 once for an extremely large volume phrase that had two words. I was getting tons of comments on the page, time on page was insane due to the design, lots of links and shares. And then this rinky dink page with about 100 words was beating me.

I'm changing the details here, but let's say I was ranking for "pizza quiz." This guy tried to spam his way to the top for the one-word "pizza" and got over-optimized on-page and with his anchors. So he turns around and puts "quiz" into his only header on the page and gives it ONE single anchor of "pizza quiz" on top of thousands of "pizza" anchors. And boom he took #1 with no issue.

The reason is, Google has thresholds for over-optimization that keeps you from ranking for that specific term. But it doesn't mean you still aren't crazily hyper-optimized for it.

It goes back to the tf*IDF too. The more times a word or phrase is used, the less important it must be. This is to help algorithms sort out common words, but you can find yourself hurting your own chances to rank for a specific phrase by over-using it.

So in the end, and I've experimented with this since discovering that one guy's page, is that at this current time, you can only over-optimize for phrases. Not for topics.

Use the word "pizza" all you want or need and that should not impact your ability to rank for "best pizza restaurant" given you optimize around it. I'd find creative ways to say "pizza restaurant" in different ways since the main term only has a modifier on front (by that I mean "best"). Otherwise you should do fine.

This is really a shitty situation with tf*IDF in long posts. I have a 10k word post about a 2-word phrase... of course I'm going to use that phrase a lot over 10k words. In terms of density it's not a problem but Google's leaning on that tf*IDF too hard to do their job for them.

This is where I agree with Calamari. Use LSI variations as much as you can to safeguard long posts and to future-proof your work. I have pages ranking top 3 for terms where my keyword density is literally around 0.05% (not the 3-5% people spout off). It's all about where you use them and what related terms you toss in there to show a mastery over the whole topic (Like you saying "pies" instead of pizza here and there).

 

[Finges]

I agree with Calamari in general but with a difference in the specifics.

Use the word "pizza" all you want or need and that should not impact your ability to rank for "best pizza restaurant" given you optimize around it. I'd find creative ways to say "pizza restaurant" in different ways since the main term only has a modifier on front (by that I mean "best"). Otherwise you should do fine.

I think I get it... since on a page built around Pizza Restaurants, it's inevitable that I would end up using the word Pizza a ton, so maybe I would get an over-optimization penalty on the word 'Pizza'. But as long as I use some similar terms and not over use to 'Best Pizza Restaurants' I wouldn't necessarily get penalized for that.

There's a lot to learn! Had to look up LSI and TF-IDF that led me down a crazy rabbit hole of reading the interwebs...

 

[Ryuzaki]

That's precisely what I was trying to say. It's all about the particular phrase. It would be better to think of it as "key phrase stuffing" instead of "key word stuffing".

One other thing, I'd try to consider plurals and rearrangements as incidences of the main key phrase. I'd watch out with just trying to get away with basic modifiers too, like { Best | Top }. If you go that route try to use uncommon words like premiere, supreme, unparalleled, etc.