Hi, I have a certain topic, some product pages... and some words are repeated on any particular product page and links pointing to it as well... I find it almost impossible not to repeat, because it refers to that particular thing... A good example is a bookstore: book name and author in title, link, in alt text etc... I'd like to ask you opinion on how harmful do you think this could be on those pages from the SEO/Panda point-of-view: Repetitions can be found on/in: page title (window title)... page H1 (in text, visible) title... inbound links... image alt texts... a few times in the text... I tried variations, reducing repetitions. But this is kind-of-a technical page and I mustn't omit specifications of the product. Otherwise it could be misleading. What do you think, how harmful could this be? By the way: these are secondary pages, not the primary pages, not the primary keywords of my site...
It is quite simply about readability for the content part. A little repitition for focus so both human and robot readers can guage your focus is OK as long as your text retains readability. Without some use of repitition within things like your title, URL and then repeating again within your body text you are going to find it very difficult to rank above your competition who are doing so and getting the balance right. The balance can be fine though. It is very easy to go over the top without very skillful writing weaving the words into the text. This is where things so easily go wrong and where the argument lays about repitition, keyword spamming and just plain bad use of language, but it is still readabilty which is key. People will tell you you must write for people and not search engines and this is a double edged sword as you still need to weave the keyword phrases in and so as I said this is where the art of SEO writing comes in where maintaining the readability whilst getting the phrases in is the name of the game. SO IMHO a little repitition is OK but there is a fine line and so you need to be very careful, but it is"readability" that is the key. Did you notice my repitition above? The "readabilty" repitition! I repeated it a few times but hopefully maintained readabilty?