Keyword stuffing?

A site we maintain had the titles of items dynamically placed in the alt tags of such site common images as the "add to cart" button or the "email this" buttons. The owners wanted this so that when someone moused over the image they would see a short description of the action with the title like: Email 'Rotor Pads' to a friend

Their ranking in Google plummeted to an all new low along with traffic from them. I am wondering if perhaps Google saw this as keyword stuffing and penalized them. If so, how can we get things back in Google's good graces?

I'd be really surprised if it is this. So long as you arent using the same phrase many many times as alt tags on the same page I think it wouldnt be seen as key word stuffing. Google updates its algorithms and index regularly so it could be coincidence.

Try buying traffic through Adwords until your rankings cover.

See,
check keyword density for your targeted keywords, it must not exceed to 8%. here is one tool to check density http://live-keyword-analysis.com/ i hope it will help you.

4 - 6% seems to be the highest I am seeing pages reach. Is that a pretty good number for density?

There is no "right" percentage for keyword density. Pages with a keyword density of less then 1%, or don't even have the keywords on their page at all, can rank well for a term and pages with "the perfect keyword density" (whatever you want to pretend that is) can rank poorly. Putting keywords into a page just to increase its keyword density is a common mistake. Just write good content and use your keywords where appropriate.

I'm not sure but I think for google it should not be more then 2.50%

That's not even remotely close to true. I'd love to hear why you said that and where you got that information.

bauhsoj,

When you are checking for keyword density on the Live Keyword Analysis site, what are you placing as the text to check?

I apologize for asking, but I just wanted to make sure that you weren't just copying the text of the page without adding all instances such as the "e-mail this" and "add to cart" buttons.

Something to think about is if there are any pages with very short descriptions, such as discontinued or out of stock items, items that did not require a large description, or anything else that you might have forgotten to check.

My concern is a page with many uses of the keyword with little to no description.

It sounds like you didn't check all of the pages, so maybe see about that.

If you are still concerned, you could have the owner contact Google for an inquiry.

Really, though, it sounds like you might want to at least look at other factors, such as demand for your product at this time of year.

Hope this helps!

don't use more than 8% keyword density for your targeted keyword, this is optimum density for any site.

I'd love to know why you claim that specific amount is "optimum". Have any resources to back that up?

Yeah, here's an NORWAY! example of why there isn't a specific NORWAY! keyword density that is optimal, because this sentence has 8% for NORWAY!

Does it make sense yet?

I saw a tool named Algo Cracker that provides you the keyword density of the top 1000 sites in Google, in most parts of the site: title, metatags, body. It seems that it ranges from 3 to 8%. Apparently there is a clear danger of over-optimizing and dropping rankings.

I use Web Seo to optimize sites and I think they recommend 2.50%
I'm not sure why they do that, but my sites are normally on the first page of a query on google, I'm not saying it all depends on in- page optimization in fact I have a site which for years is on google for e-gold hosting, I think it is even the first one, and I dont even mention the word e-gold on the home page, but because of some nice backlinks with this anchor text.

Not coincidentally that is also the range that keyword density falls into for naturally written text. In other words, that data means nothing.