Google can penalize you for a specific key phrase?

[mpw45233]

Hello everybody, Jack an Nik are already familiar with my situation. But in a few words, I have 2 exact match domains with lots of unique content and decent backlinks that are not ranking anywhere in the serps for their keyphrase.

So in short, I am trying to rank for the phrase, keyword 1 keyword 2. So I registered the domain keyword1 keyword2.com. Then I named my blog "keyword1 keyword2". Then I made the article title for the homepage (you guessed it) keyword1 keyword2.

Long story short, my homepages don't rank at all for their exact match terms (keyword1 keyword2), even as the interior pages are on page 1 many times. I've been trying to figure this out, and have been helped alot in this forum.

But I found something strange today. I googled my target keyphrase plus a random word from the first paragraph on my homapage. I instantly started seeing my forever lost homepage url show up in serps, many times on the first page. Other results also had the searched terms in their text, but i showed up above them.

In one case, I saw my home page url, and the post category url (which have the exact same content) show up right next to each other. (Yes I made a mistake when building my sites)

Please note: I didn't search a continious string of text. All words were seperated by other words. And all words were present on other websites.

So here's what it looks like to me. I couldn't rank anywhere in the serps for a keyphrase that was the same as my my exact match domain. But I did rank very well for my keyword phrase when added to it almost any other word located in my homepage article.

I believe I was penalized for a specific phrase because my domain, blog title, and page title were the exact same phrase. I have higher than average keyword density in the article body because it's hard to use too many pronouns in my niche.

What are other members thoughts on this? It's the only thing I can think of. These 2 exact match domain homepages rank nowhere for the targeted keyphrase.

Btw, I wasn't trying to keyword stuff. It's just these sites are very focused.

But surely there are many sites where the domain name and the blog title are the same. Is it possible that an identicle page title would raise a red flag with google?

I'm going to change my page title and see what happens.

Any thoughts?

Michael

[daisy]

Whats the density rate for your keyword? 2 - 5%?

Have you been building backlinks to your site? If so how? Are you using Wordpress? If so are you using a SEO plugin? Do your posts have pictures named the keyword? Are you building links within your own site from one post to another, or the home page?

How old is your site? How tough is the keyword competition?

There's really so many factors involved, there's no telling what's going on.

[mpw45233]

Hi Daisy. Thanks for the response.

The phrase I'm targeting is 2 words and returns 800,000 results when searched in quotes. But most of the sites that come up aren't optimized for the key phrase, and don't have a large amount of content. Only a couple have the keyword in the domain, and my domain is an exact match.

My site has been indexed for about 2 months. It's a static WP site. I had some duplicate content issues that I recently took care of. Currently has only 5 pages. (but so does alot of my competition) Don't currently have any pictures (didn't know they helped seo)...articles between 500 and 1000 words, about 4% keyword density.

Don't yet have any internal links in the text. Would it be ok to put the links in a list of "related articles" at the end of each page?

For linkbuilding I'm currently using free blogs (Wordpress.com Blogger etc..) Article submission (though I don't have a lot) and commenting on related do follow blogs.(not spammy ones though)

After changing the home page title (so it didn't match the blog title) and spinning the content a little, it has now made it's way into the top 200 results for the first time.(for my targeted key phrase) Hopefully it will bounce around a little and land somewhere decent.

At first I thought it was a duplicate content penalty. But I really do think Google penalized me for that exact key phrase. When I added any other word in my home page article to the targeted key phrase, my site showed up on page 1-5.

I didn't search a continious string of text, and the words I added were words that would have to be included in any mediocre article about the subject.

My other sites are doing good, the 2 that are in the tank have this 1 thing in common.

Could just be a coincidence I suppose, and when you're trying to figure out google, a lot of speculation is involved.

Thanks again

Michael