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Courtney195

: Prevent Googlebot from seeing or indexing common keywords such as "read full story" I have a site that uses a lot of the same anchor text. For example, "read full story". When I do an SEO

@Courtney195

Posted in: #Google #Indexing #Keywords #Seo

I have a site that uses a lot of the same anchor text. For example, "read full story".

When I do an SEO audit for my site, I find that these are my most frequent keywords, but I am not trying to rank for these "common" keywords.

Is there a way to exclude them or weight them in such a way that Google (and other search engines) do not think these are the main keywords for any particular page on my site?

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@Heady270

Using a word many times on your site does not help you rank for it. Nor does Google determine what your website is about based on which words you use most.

One of my sites uses the word "rectangle" four times on every single page. It is the text about different sizes of images to download. My site isn't about rectangles. Google knows my site isn't about rectangles.

Google determines what your site is about from the words that you use prominently on the page (titles and headings) and from the context of the inbound links that you get.

When words are very common, Google expects sites to use them. Many blogs have "full article" all over them. When your site is similar to other sites that are ranking well, you won't have any problems using the same techniques.

There is no problem with using common words on lots of pages on your site. You don't need to worry about hiding these keywords or getting Google to put less weight on them.

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@Nimeshi995

I think you answered your own question in the first statement.

Using the same anchor text for a lot of your links is not a good idea. Instead, try using something more descriptive. However, this is very common so I would not get fixated on this unless your entire page says nothing but "read more". Search engines are smart enough to recognize that "Read More" is not your primary keyword.

Based on your description this is blog type website with article exerts. Make sure that instead of using "read more" to link to your articles you hyperlink the titles AND make sure that your titles are properly optimized. Having articles that are closely related to a particular subject is also key for relevancy so "bundled" your articles by subject.

Also, I would concentrate on optimizing the following:

1) Page Title + Meta Title

2) Page Header (h1,h2)

3) Page Intro paragraph + Meta Description

Lastly, sounds to me like your SEO audit is being done using one of those free tools. They can often be misleading.

Have you checked your Google Webmaster Tools account to see what queries are coming up? If you linked your GTW account with your Google Analytics account you can look under Acquisitions --> Search Engine Optimization --> Queries. This will give you a better idea of how people are finding you in search.

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