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Category: Keyword Research

Learn about keyword research best practices and how to improve your keyword strategy.


  • Hello everyone, Could you please explain how can I "target keywords"? So from my understanding, I do a research on keywords, then find those which I can rank for easily, and then what? Do I build links to my website pages with these keywords? Or do I create different articles on the website with this keyword?

    | moneywise_test
    0

  • Hi there, I'm (logged into Google Adwords)  and researching search volume for keywords but I'm seeing weird results. I know that the term "outage notification" had between 1000 and 5000 monthly global searches when I last looked (I know this because I add a search volume tag to the keywords I track ranking of via Moz).  Yet, now when I check global search volume via keyword planner I'm seeing only 70 global searches per month (AND low competition which I know is not true).  Is this perhaps because only the exact match is reported or is something else going on? Very frustrated as I have now lost faith in the keyword research process via Google keyword planner....not sure where to go from here!! Thanks very much

    | SnapComms
    1

  • I just joined and started by doing some keyword analysis, For some reason although I select "On Google", the tool only reports Bing Search Volume (Exact match). I am not that interested in Bing - not sure how to display the Google search stats

    | jbendiner
    0

  • but I just want to use those keywords the 120 on 3 campaigns and the 60 on 2. So i should only be using 180 keywords through out 5 campaigns but its saying I have hit my limit. PLease can someone explain how best I can share my keywords out around the various campaigns. Thanks Tom

    | tomfairhall
    0

  • I am working with a client (http://healthagy.com) to help drive traffic around specific health topics around clinical research. I'm stumped about how one of the pages (http://healthagy.com/botox-for-migraines-6-things-you-need-to-know/) can get around 5,000 visits a month, while the next most-visited page gets around 200. I don't know if we just got lucky or it was the right place/right time or what. I'm trying to figure out what I can research about this page to get insights to build more great content around other topics. Any ideas?

    | chiphanna2
    0

  • Hi, Question from a newbie. Several years ago, my company invented The Mosquito device which emits high frequency sound to disperse groups of troublesome kids. I guess you could say it went viral. The result was that we have always ranked at position 1 or 2 on Google and never really put any work in to it. It was automatic. My question is, that over the years we have brought out other products which were not as significant etc. and have put a bit of effort in to rankings in the UK and done OK, however, no we are about to launch something that is going to generate a lot of interest in the security market, but not as much as mosquito. We have therefore been putting some serious thought in to the name of this product and this is where i am stuck, i have only been learning SEO for a matter of months, just enough to know that i don't know enough, so here is my plea for guidance. Our company is called Compound Security Systems www.compoundsecurity.co.uk and we make GSM and GPRS communicating security systems that are battery powered and wireless, for use in empty properties, construction sites, farms, etc. Our new product is one of the above but with a visual verification (camera / video) system in it specifically for EXTERNAL use (there are 1 or 2 for internal use). The only name we can come up with that is not already in use is 'CompoundVision". Now, going back to Mosquito, we ranked 1 or 2 even though there are millions of pages of content relating to Mosquitos. We have a similar situation with CompoundVision. Compound is part of our company name, the camera systems will also be used to secure compounds, but 'compound vision' is how insects eyes work and there is a huge amount of content out there. I have run a keyword analysis in Moz.com Keyword analysis tool (see below) but i really do not understand how to draw a conclusion due to the mitigating factors above. Any suggestions / wisdom would be most welcome. Thanks Si Rank Page Name and URL / Vertical Result Page Authority Page Linking Root 
    Domains Domain Authority Root Domain 
    Linking Root Domains 1 Eye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye 85.7 5 Image Results color-940x940.jpg - indianapublicmedia.org trilobite-vision.jpg - www.juniorgeo.co.uk hollywood_story(1).jpg - askabiologist.asu.edu compound_eye_man.gif - www.phys.ufl.edu empire_of_ants-antseye.gif - livingwithinsects.wordpress.com 2 Compound Eyes - Photoreceptors and the Evolution of Vision https://www.boundless.com/biology/sensation-and-perception/photoreceptors-and-the-evolution-of-vision/compound-eyes/ 1 0 54.2 457 3 How is the vision of the compound eye in insects different from ... http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_is_the_vision_of_the_compound_eye_in_insects_different_from_human_vision 1 0 91.9 95.4 K 4 The Compound Eye http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CompoundEye.html 69.7 39 83.3 20.9 K 5 Modeling Insect Compound Eyes: Space-Variant Spherical Vision http://www.kyb.tue.mpg.de/publications/pdfs/pdf1826.pdf 1 0 87.8 35.7 K 6 Educational animations of vision by insect compound eyes http://www.physioviva.com/movies/ommatidium_struc-func/ 14.2 1 21.1 16 7 B-EYE - The world through the eyes of a bee - Andy Giger http://andygiger.com/science/beye/beyehome.html 44.3 48 33.5 74 8 The Evolution of Arthropod Eyes http://www.d.umn.edu/~olse0176/Evolution/insects.html 1 0 95.6 103 K 9 Insect Color Vision: Compound Eyes | A Moment of Science ... http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/insect-color-vision/ 42.1 6 69.9 3.29 K 10 compound vision http://www.compoundvision.com/ 17.7 1 15.6 5 680 100 3 M

    | DaddySmurf
    0

  • Using a phrase such as "Compare Car Insurance Quotes" as the anchor text, will google count that phrase as an exact much as well as the shorter version "Compare Car Insurance" or is it only the full phrase? I assume also that keyword phrases on the page will count as 2 for 1 as google will just look at the set of words and use both phrases? Thoughts? Ash

    | AshShep1
    0

  • I am working with an insurance agency that wants to target the below types of insurance in Dalton GA, Ringold GA, Chattanooga TN and and/or Georgia. Home Insurance
    Auto Insurance
    Health Insurance
    Life Insurance
    Restaurant Insurance
    Contractor Insurance They are a new agency that doesn't have a website yet and only a small online marketing budget. Right now, I'm starting to work with them on their new site and want to make sure the on-site SEO works with the insurance/locations they want to target. What I'm having trouble with is the volume of monthly searches and trying to find keywords that they could realistically get some traffic and leads from. Most of the keywords I check with the Adwords tool are less than 50 exact match searches or just show a dash. The only keywords with a decent amount of exact searches are the main insurance types like "restaurant insurance" or "home insurance Georgia". How can I get an idea of the number of leads and amount of traffic this site might get when most of the keywords searched for only a handful of times per month? I can build the site to easily target all the above types of insurance in Dalton, GA, which has a population of about 33,000, but I don't know what kind of results this agency might expect if they were to rank in the top 3 spots. Thanks in advance for any ideas or advice!

    | lagunaitech
    0

  • So I run a tip site based on the popular video game series Madden NFL. We also do NCAA and since I started getting invested in SEO, I noticed we aren't even in the top 50 for a lot of these results. What would be a good way to get started? Just throwing in some keywords that I want to be targeted?

    | taychatha
    0

  • I searched around for this answer first but got information overload. I write a photography blog and tonight I will put up a post of photography from around Jiyugaoka Train Station.   I will probably call the post Around Jiyugaoka Station or Around Jiyugaoka or something like that.  I like in Jiyugaoka (a part of Tokyo) so I have other posts that I have keyworded for Jiyugaoka. What is the best way to determine what is the best derivative of 'Jiyugaoka Station' to choose for the best traffic?  I assume I could enter them in to manually into the Keyword Analysis but is there is easier way that would give recommendations?

    | ShootTokyo
    0

  • I just setup a new site in MOZ, rankings have run on 200+ keywords for two weeks. The report shows 14 visits for the keyword "google backup". Is that 14 visits since the last crawl or 14 visits all time since I have been tracking that keyword within Moz? Thanks!

    | nuash
    0

  • I have 3 keywords that I am targeting. Assume for the time being that they are all equally competitive. Includes local exact match monthly searches: Managed IT Services - 3600 IT Managed Services - 720 Managed IT Support - 170 They are all exactly synonymous, not to mention other keywords such as IT Managed Support, Managed IT Service, IT Managed Service, Managed IT Service Provider, etc..  My current strategy is to target the top 3 all on one page. The problem then is the title tag: Managed IT Services | IT Managed Services | Managed IT Support Pretty spammy. I could build pages for all 3, but how would I incorporate them into the website since they are all synonyms. Can I get some recommendations on how to handle this? What would you use for a title tag? How would handle separate pages with synonymous content?

    | CsmBill
    0

  • Hi Guys, Just watched Randi's last White Board Friday. He was talking about Google shake0ups and the fact that Google is more often returning results where there is a news carousel at the top of page one. Has anyone seen any research to show if people who are looking for a product / solution are actively clicking on these news items or not? And should this news carousel be considered the number one spot, or is the number one spot still the fist true SERP result shown below it? Many thanks Si

    | DaddySmurf
    0

  • Hi, I'm currently in the process of optimising a new ecommerce site with tons of content.
    We're really well-researching our information and are aiming for one page a week, so each page (such as category pages etc) is getting 5-7 days of research before the content is written, so that we know our info is correct and that more than enough content is available, rather than a simple 300-500 word article.
    One category page in particular has the potential for maybe 4,000-6,000 words, or even more (I don't want to hit that, as it's not needed, but I'd like to go into enough detail about enough things to bring us up on top as the market leader) - Our biggest competitor is currently hitting around 2,500 words on the category page for their site and they're ranking for a lot of long tails. (Of course they're also getting a lot of links too!)
    To put it simply, we have a better quality product and a range of options (we're one of the first [if not the first] in the UK to have several options for this product where you have the choice of going for the cheap option, or going for higher priced and better quality options etc), whereas our main competitor simply has one stand alone product. By default this gives us much more to work with regarding potential content. While building this site we haven't bothered to consider 'keyword density', as we're going for as white-a-hat as possible, but when it comes to long tails I'm finding that I may have to consider it for this page at least.
    We have a few dozen long tails such as 'Where does X come from', 'Why is X so expensive', 'What is the difference between X and X' etc - You know the kind of keywords.
    To help specifically with the long tails we've opted to include a FAQ section to that category page, but it seems that by doing this I have accidentally gone up to ~3% density on the 'X', which I suppose isn't too bad, but at the same time that one keyword has already made ~30 appearances in the content - and all we have done so far is the FAQ section.
    I'm going through now and rewording it so that it's less 'keywordy' (although there does seem to be a limit to the number of times to can say 'it' before that starts to sound odd..), but was just wondering how you manage to write a long and detailed piece of content that is all specifically about one thing, without having to use that one keyword too many times, while also hitting plenty of long tails at the same time?

    | azu25
    0

  • Edited

    | 2bloggers
    0

  • Hi all, A confused and frustrated SEO noob needing a little guidance here 😞 I'm a bit lost on how I should conduct my keyword research for a start-up e-commerce site selling dietary supplements (~200 brands and ~2000 SKU's). From my understanding, there are two different types of pages I have to optimize for other than the Homepage & CMS pages: Category pages and product pages. As part of the fundamental on-page optimization, I'm planning to write unique category/product descriptions for better visibility (as well as to avoid duplicate content issues) on SE. Consequently, this process has prompted several questions related to my keyword research. My questions are: How would I determine which keywords to optimize for? How many keywords should I target per product page? per category page? Should I include product / brand name as keywords? The site isn't live yet, but is set to launch in mid-August. Any ideas on how I can conduct my keyword research to be used for category/product level pages? Thanks all.

    | byoung86
    0

  • The SEOMoz PRO tools provide a keyword difficulty score. How is this calculated? And is it a score for organic search competition or for PPC competition?

    | BenHuntLtd
    0

  • So we all know about longtail keyword vs. short tail. However, it seems that the definition is a bit inconsistant. Some people say longtail keywords are keywords that get very low amounts of traffic, others that they are key phrases with 2 or more words. And others add to this that they have high conversion rate but describe specific features, product, service, model # etc. In an ideal model I suppose all of these things would be true. As keyword length increases, traffic tends to decrease, keyword is more specific pointing at features, model#, specific product etc and therefore the conversion rate is a bit higher as well. However, the data isn't a perfect curve. I will see keywords that get 18,000 searches but have 4 words. And then I will see single word key phrases that get <10 -20 searches a month. What am I to consider these? Its like they fit half the criteria. Any comments on this would be helpful and appreciated. I suppose the real question I am after is - it seems like the real definition of a long tail keyword cant be any of the above traits of a long tail keyword. How do you really define a long tail keyword in all circumstances (without it being this subjective idealized definition based on a perfect model) and where would the keyword circumstances (lots of words but high traffic, and low traffic but 1 word) fall in the graph? Center?

    | eastco
    0

  • Hi Guys, I am new to SEOmoz and just finding my way around the site.  I currently have two websites up both in wordpress and both using SEO Yoast for keyword / page analysis.  SEO Yoast software basically only allows you to have 1 page / blog post optimised for 1 keyphrase.  If you try to put the same keyphrase in 2 + times for different pages or posts then Yoast flags it up as not good for SEO purposes.  Is this correct? Also how do massive websites go on when previously they would have optimised many web pages / blogs for the same keywords?

    | lethalmarketing
    0

  • Hello! I am ranking very well with a keyword. But that same keyword without an S at the end (making it singural) gets quite a few more searches per month according to Google's Keyword Tool.  However, dropping the S just doesn't sound quite right or make as much sense. So how can I target both keywords? Thanks in advance!

    | 2bloggers
    0

  • Hi Moz Community, I'm wondering if anyone has a comprehensive list of keyword moderators that they could share? For example: online
    buy [keyword] online
    cheap
    cheapest
    best
    top
    free
    [country name]
    [area name]
    store
    shop
    purchase etc... I always find that it's useful to run [keyword + moderator] for search volumes as it sometimes uncovers some exact match surprises that you may not have thought of. Thanks everyone! Gavin

    | IrishTimes
    1

  • Hi guys, Please share your best and recommended tools for keyword research. Thanks in advance.

    | KLLC
    0

  • New to Moz, and after playing with keyword research, it seems very comprehensive for analysing keywords based on my site content, and showing me how many people are visiting based on those keywords. However what I'm really looking for is 'alternative' keywords that are 'not' on my site, but still relevant to my sector, and how many searchers are using those. basic example My site is optimised for 'soccer for kids' which Moz shows me getting 50 hits for. Google KW tool reports that every month there are over 2000 searches for 'football for kids' Because my site has no mention of 'Football', Moz doesn't show this as an alternative KW Admittedly my site is new in Moz, so do I just wait a bit longer? or do I continue to use Google KW tool? I'm sure I'm missing the obvious. Thanks!

    | petenorris
    0

  • We are creating landing pages to target keywords, and would like to be able to have something set up so at a glance we can see each page's rank for its targeted keyword. For example, if we have pages with the URLs of example.com/sites/purple-widgets, example.com/sites/purple-widgets-for-cheap, example.com/sites/cheap-purple-widgets, etc., we'd like to see the rank of each of those pages for their respective keyword ("purple widgets", "purple widget for cheap", "cheap purple widgets", etc.). Any suggestions?

    | brandonRT
    0

  • Hi, Im a programmer but SEO newbie and I am trying out Moz Pro. To be honest I feel really disheartened right now, I find the world of SEO very difficult and full of conflicting information. Anyway, I am trying to get my head around the Keyword difficulty tool in order to determine what keyword I want to go after and what I would need to do in order to outrank the competitors. The website with the highest PA, most external links to the domain (4000 versus around 80-90), the most linking root domain and the best on page optimasations ranks nr 5. The website that ranks 1 is the only one with good social signals. All of the websites has the keyword in the page title. What am I missing? This makes no sense to me. Is this Keyword tool reliable? VERY grateful for any help from you guys.. /Emma

    | EmmaGrey
    0

  • I was doing keyword research, and for some of my keywords I was seeing Google+ listings last week. they were gone earlier this week, but now they are back. We weren't in them anyway (new project) but can anyone explain this? Same computer, Same IP,

    | CsmBill
    0

  • I tend to focus on two or three main keywords to target from the homepage. In fact come to think of it from all pages. Do you target up to 10 keywords of more from one page. Taking longer tail keywords into consideration. Granted the limits to any phrase or keyword group.

    | onlinemediadirect
    0

  • Buongiorno from 16 Degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 What if a client wants to rank for commercial solcitors & commercial lawyers regardless of the best argument you could present. Isee this as a problem as semanticall lawyers & solicitors semantically mean the same thing like ATM & cashpoint, cab & taxi So your left stuck with two phrases  both menaing the same thing and you have to create physical web pages. Do you A
    Create pages just about commerciual solicitors
    & Create Pages just about commercial lawyers
    Do you B
    Create & blended page with copy focused on Laywers & solicitors Help my head hurts http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/confused.jpg Grazie Tanto, David

    | Nightwing
    0

  • -Most of the organic keywords driving traffic to our website are branded. -I’ve used UberSuggest, but those keyword phrases tend to have low CPC and low volume -Thus, the UberSuggest keywords usually produce a low benefit & K.O.B score. -Andrew

    | Todd_Kendrick
    0

  • For example, I live in new york and most of my keywords, page titles and meta are featured for new york but I want to expand into new jersey. Should I add create new content with those keywords, page titles and meta (blog posts, new pages)? Thats what I am doing but I wanted to see what the pros say. Thanks guys!

    | ayesroc
    0

  • Good morning, When trying to select my best keywords to promote, i am trying to find the max number of keyword that i will promote and that can still be affective. From your experience, what is this number? Thank you SEOwise

    | iivgi
    0

  • Let's say that I write content in some random pages in my websites - is there a possibility that it will affect and optimize my home page for the same keywords? Hope you understand & sorry for my bad English!

    | Rephael
    0

  • Hello, I have the opportunity to buy the plural of an exact domain name in a niche I am interested. I would like to know if it helps to rank on the singular version of the keyword. To illustrate, is the domain cars.com good to rank for the word car? Or online datings for online dating? Thanks a lot.

    | EndeR-
    0

  • 6 weeks ago, we attempted to improve the on page optimisation for the following keyword 'wedding venues ''edited''' on the following page: ''edited'' I just checked when the page was last crawled by google by checking the cache date in the SERPs which is the 27th of May 201?. We have been tracking the keyword 'wedding venues ''edited''' with the moz keyword ranking tool for the last little while and we've seen no real improvement, in fact we've dropped back a bit in the SERPs to 53rd (Moz says 'Not in top 50', it was 53rd when i last manually checked). I understand that we have to be building links to our site, but i still hoped we would be doing better than this for this keyword with the work we've done does anyone have any advice on how we can improve? Have we over optimised? We would really appreciate any help!

    | jennie.evans
    0

  • Hi Just been having a play around with the Moz Keyword Competition Tool and noticed that the reuslts given in terms of exact match searches is different from the data in the actual Google Adwords keyword tool even though the Moz tool pulls its data form the Google Adwords index so technically should be the same right? Was just wondering if anyone else had noticed that or if I am missing something. All you help would be greatly appreciated! Cheers

    | PIXUS
    0

  • If I am currently ranking well for "Lawn Mowers" and I also want to target "Cheap Lawn Mowers" will it affect my ranking for "Lawn Mowers" if I change my on page optimization by adding "Cheap" to the title, H1, etc. or will it effectively target both.

    | UK2Group
    0

  • Hello, We're flushing out a second site for a client that's a second site in the same niche. How do I know when to use the same keywords for both sites and when to use entirely different keywords. One site is fairly strong, and the other will be less strong, though we're going to strengthen it quickly.

    | BobGW
    0

  • The account settings state that there are 300 keywords PER campaign but I've found that I've met my max without getting up to 300word/campaign... Any feedback would be much appreciated.

    | BritneyMuller
    0

  • I sell machinery branded Co-matic.  Most people search Comatic so I was wondering if I should change my keywords from Co-matic to Comatic.  Would the change have a significant impact on SEO? Thanks!

    | kysizzle6
    0

  • We have just introduced targeted pages for all of our keywords, however their is lots of overlap with existing established pages. For instance for the keyword Small Meeting Rooms we have the new page, titled Small-Meeting-Rooms which is now competing with the more established Meeting-Rooms. Its early days for both pages, about 2 weeks and 6 weeks respectively. But is it counterproductive to spread out our search juice between lost of pages? Should we just focus on a few? Any feedback, especially feedback based on real experiences is much appreciated!?

    | HireSpace
    0

  • Hi! Actually, i have been getting down after i fix internal links on each page. What i have done is linked keywords to the concern pages from other pages on same website. But i see the result going down in the google organic list. is this bad practice? example: http://www.nortekk.no/vi-utforer/blikkenslager-15/ Keyword : blikkenslager 1. Internal link, i doubt on this. May be it is not good. please confirm and help me 2. Main keyword usage in document. Must i reduce it? Thank you in advance Vels

    | Webworld_Norway
    0

  • I am running the keyword research tool and the Google AdWords Broad Match Google AdWords Exact Match are coming up unavailable,i live in South Africa and i use this software for clients here, every time I run this it doesn't show, why...............? its not my internet, I have a 10mb line, even when I refresh the page it doesnt pick the volumes up Capturehelp.JPG

    | nick_pageone
    0

  • Hi There, I work in legal services and the most common search terms in our field always contain 'solicitors' (or lawyers) after specialist areas e.g. landlord solicitors, property solicitors, divorce solicitors etc. Naturally, we have a page dedicated to each of these specialist areas but we haven't optimised our pages with keywords. Is there any known issues with repeatedly optimising our pages across the site using these keywords? Thanks, Stuart

    | Stuart26
    0

  • I noticed today that lowercase and capital L give different results on Google: Link:http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns983/index.html
    link:http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns983/index.html Which one should I be using to check backlinks? Thanks

    | StevenWB
    0

  • I am looking for a tool that would show ranking keywords for my website - except Google Anlaytics and Webmaster. I don't want to enter the keywords to see if my website is ranking I'd like to see if there are any keywords that  rank already Thanks!

    | Rubix
    0

  • Seeing something a little strange on one of my clients sites. They are position 3 in Google and the only result on the page Google Authorship installed on their site. Exact match terms in the UK via Keywords tool are 9600 yet they only get 125 clicks on average for the month. There rank has not changed in the last 3 months and they have had a solid position 3.

    | tempowebdesign
    0

  • Hi I am a seo beginner, please help me to know and usability of Keyword Difficulty Report. Actually, i see the difficulty percentage is 28 for a keyword and i have option to generate defficulty report. Bit confused how can i use this?

    | Webworld_Norway
    0

  • I have a strange encounter since Sunday. One of my keyword not appearing in search. suddenly gone from pos 120+- to outer space. It is still in google index upon site: searches. My other keywords still appearing in google serps. Anybody encounter such scenario?

    | mavvy
    0

  • I just discovered the Pro Perks on SEOMoz and noticed HitTail: HitTail tells you, in real-time, the most promising search terms you should target based on your existing traffic. We do this using a sophisticated algorithm tuned by analyzing over 1.2 billion keywords. I think this could be a pretty useful tool for me since I have a decent existing traffic flow. Are any SEOMoz users using it? If so, what's your take?

    | aacook
    0

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