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I have a dropdown list on my site with the list of countries in the world. When I run an SEO check and see my top keywords, "island" is coming out as the most used word on my site, because of the dropdown list.

How do I stop this from happening? Is there a way I can block certain parts of my site without upsetting Google? Or is there another way to go about it?

David
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    Do not pay attention to keyword lists from SEO sites and Google Search Console. These are junk. Keywords is not how search works. Not even close! Especially if the terms in question are within templated navigation. Search engines largely ignore terms found in this part of your page. Pages rank for content and not for anything else. – closetnoc Aug 05 '17 at 15:41

2 Answers2

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Is there a way I can block certain parts of my site without upsetting Google?

If youre gonna block certain parts to google, you might as well do the same to the public, otherwise you're asking for trouble from google. In your situation, I don't think any kind of blocking is necessary.

island" is coming out as the most used word on my site, because of the dropdown list. How do I stop this from happening?

Make island a category and list it as such. So if your items are this:

Jacks Island
Manitoulin Island
Darkmans Island
Blueboys Island
...

Then change it to this:

Islands

Jacks
Manitoulin
Darkmans
Blueboys

But style the category differently so that people won't think its a clickable menu item. and if your list is inside a listbox on the site, put the category name (islands) outside of it so people can always see the category as they scroll through the list.

Mike -- No longer here
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  • Related: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/74633/well-structured-urls-vs-urls-optimized-for-seo/74639#74639 – closetnoc Aug 06 '17 at 17:31
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SEO checkers are meaningless and you should never seek to hide any content from Google or Bing as it is considered cloaking because you are purposely trying to manipulate search rankings which could result in an algorithm penalty.

Google and Bing are not stupid... having a drop down box with hundreds of countries or regions is not going to penalise your site, or page, nor is going to dilute your page with irrelevant keywords.

Keyword density is not as important as it was a decade ago and I highly recommend that you stop using online checkers, since most are outdated or biased because they want you to pay money for some features.

Real SEO work starts with reading articles written by reputable vendors and authors, mostly found on sites such as MOZ, Search Engine Land and so on.

Simon Hayter
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