Skip to content

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Category: Keyword Research

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


  • We have about 300 main keywords and we are receiving an almost equivalent amount of traffic for long tail phrases. These long tail phrases are more specific though, and are almost different queries entirelly. For example " keyword " is generally the same question as "keyword for sale" but "keyword" is not necessarily the same question as "aftermarket keyword" So my question is, how do you go about creating a BUNCH of new pages?

    | TylerAbernethy
    0

  • I am using the Seomoz keyword tool to do some research. Some of the keywords I am researching are returning with a difficulty of 20 - 30% , are these good percentage keywords to target. I will obviously be following Seomoz tips / methods etc

    | wtfi
    0

  • If i have a lengthy article which I decide to split into two separate articles E.g part 1 and part 2 but I target the same keyword in both articles, is this bad from an SEO point of view? For example, if I publish an article about 'healthy snacks ideas' and call the first article 'Healthy snack ideas part 1' and the second article 'Healthy snacks ideas part 2' in order to differentiate between them, would these two articles effectively just compete against one another? Is using part 1 and part 2 in article titles bad practice? Essentially what I am wondering is should you never ever have more than one article that is targetting the same keywords or should I just target slightly different keywords for each article even if they are very closely related?

    | simon_realbuzz
    0

  • I would like to exclude my own domain from seach statisics- so when I search the numbers are not reflected in the various search engines.  Do I need to register the domain in each search engine to do that? Thanks!

    | Kenaiguide
    0

  • Hi Folks, I have a question about how duplicate content works. We sell all different kinds of goat milk soap. Each kind has its own product page and unique description. However, there are some benefits that all of the different soap have in common. I'd like to list those benefits on each individual goat milk soap page, with the product-specific benefits and description right below it. My questions are: 1. If I include the same exact block of text and images on each page, along with the unique description. Will the search engine see that as duplicate content? 2. Furthermore, will this dilute any keyword ranking ability that content brings to a page, because it occurs on 15 different pages? (i.e. the search engine can't tell which one is the "best" result). If so, what do you recommend in this kind of situation? Thanks, Hal

    | AlabuSkinCare
    1

  • Hi folks, I read the beginners guide (a couple times, haha) but I have some questions on specific keyword selection for pages on our site. We make natural skin care products. Goat milk soap is our flag ship product and we make about 15 different varieties. For the moisturizers, we have normally at most two different kids (two body lotions, two body butters, one facial moisturizer, etc). My questions are: What keywords should I select to optimize the home page for? Should these be broad keywords like "natural skin care"? We've never tried to rank for things like this before because they are highly competitive. Or should they be specific keywords? Specific keywords would compete with our own product pages I think, which is not good, right? What page should I select to optimize for the term "goat milk soap"? Since we make many varieties, I'm inclined to optimize the "category" page for the term "goat milk soap", and optimize the individual product pages for variations on it (e.g. "lavender goat milk soap"). Does that make sense? This site is a brand new site for us and we've done practically zero SEO work on it so far. I'm just kinda getting into SEO. So I'm just trying to figure out a good strategy before I begin. If you want to check out the site its http://alabu.com. Any suggestions on a general SEO strategy are greatly appreciated. Thanks, Hal

    | AlabuSkinCare
    0

  • Hi I have a new domain, The website has three main products. Its a WordPress site. The Objective is Lead Generation.Target Keyword is Stairlifts The 3 main products are : Straight StairLifts
    Curved Stairtlifts
    Reconditions Stairlifts All the above products have their own dedicated landing page. My questions are : 1. Should i use all three keywords on the home page ? will that class as kw stuffing? 2. I have to use keywords Stairlifts on the all three landing pages , Will that have a negative impact. 3. What is the best way without confusing the crawler? Any tips please? Thanks.

    | conversiontactics
    0

  • I'm new to SEO and have been reading a lot to try to get up to speed. There is one concept that I'm not clear about and am not sure what to search on to find an answer. Let's say I'm trying to target 2 keyword phrases "Wordpress SEO" and "Wordpress SEO plugin". In the content of my web page should I always write "Wordpress SEO plugin" because it'll count towards both phrases I'm trying to target? Or would Google be smart enough to only give me credit for "Wordpress SEO plugin" in that case and I should also put just "Wordpress SEO" in other places in my content? Hopefully that makes sense. Thanks in advance!

    | Yuba30
    2

  • Hi all. I am currently helping a company that offers training courses and was wandering if Google would recognize 'Training' as a synonym of 'Course'  as effectively they both mean the same thing but seemed to be compounded? So instead in my keywords/title etc.having. Business Training Course I could get away with only Business Training OR Business Course. In most cases the keyword difficulty for training is a 5% harder than course but as this is for a professional company and not a standard academic I felt training seemed more appropriate.

    | starydynamo
    0

  • I know branded keywords are variations of your company name. However, my company sell a number of exclusive products that have been trademarked so no other company can use that name. Is that counted as a branded keyword?

    | AAttias
    0

  • There are cases when google keyword tool shows just a dash - means no data available and google suggest just use global volume instead. But what if we want to know only local search volume? what should we assume in this case? Does that mean local volume is 0 or it can still be respectable volume & its just Google couldn't find data ?

    | Personnel_Concept
    0

  • I am just building my website and planning keyword strategy for my pages. How much is too much in terms of optimizing locally? So if I want "web design firm birmingham al," is it overkill to add that in the URL slug, title tag, essentially all the on-page optimization? /web-design-firm-birmingham-al much uglier than web-design-firm Obviously, would prefer to think big and believe it can go beyond one city to compete in other markets statewide or regionally, thus, optimizing for one city is too narrow (and there's the ugly url thing). I'm working on offsite local optimization, so I'm thinking this will not be necessary. Thoughts?

    | csmithal
    0

  • Does anyone have suggestions for a better RU keyword tool than Yandex and/or is there a way to see exact searches in Yandex's keyword tool? It seems like the data is not at all accurate.  For example - we are ranked #2 for a keyword which has over 40,000 monthly searches (searches according to Yandex keyword tool and position confirmed with someone doing a manual search in Russia). However, we are not getting any traffic for this keyword and according to Yandex webmaster tools the keyword only got 10 impressions this past month. Any ideas for me... or would using Google be preferable eventhough people in Russia don't really use Google?

    | theLotter
    0

  • Let's say I search for AP automation and the search volume comes back as 210, where did that number come from? Is this how many searches by day, by week, year to date, etc.?

    | SheriGolla
    0

  • Recently, a client ask me for a total change of all the meta descriptions in his website. For the moment, this is the only work he want to do in his website. I said him about the difficulty about doing SEO only optimizing some parts of the whole, but he didn´t care. He only wants to change meta descriptions! That's right, it's up to you! The website is about supplements for bodybuilding and fitness. Each category of the ecommerce deals with a type of product: testosterone boosters, protein powders, weight gainers, etc. And now my question is: Should I choose different keywords for each category of products, or the same keywords for the whole website? I started choosing the same general keywords for homepage and nav, and category related keywords for categories and products. Doing well? Thanks.

    | sergio_redondo
    0

  • I just checked through seomoz keyword tool and found one of my keyword which "Photoshop Stroke Brushes" have around 50% competition.. should i continue to go with or can you suggest me any same keywords ?

    | xplodeguru
    0

  • SEOMoz's keyword research tool is awesome, but what does the competitiveness actually mean in terms of time/effort? I've read the help file which is great but to get an idea, to rank for highly competitive keywords, is that 12 months of constant effort, link-building and keyword buying or more like 3 months? (how massive is massive?) I know its a hard question to answer, but an idea would be awesome. Thanks to anyone that can answer in advance...

    | hu122
    0

  • I'm trying to determine how much certain keywords are searched, is there a tool for that? Ie. I'm a mortgage broker in a small area But I want to see if people search for things like No downpayment, etc I also want this to be location specific, how do I do this? Joel

    | JoelOlson
    1

  • i'm new on seo world, and i want know how to get low competition keywords that will send me traffic

    | ANDIAmine
    0

  • One of the seo company provide me the 2 keywords which have a 5400 exact searches per month but when i see this on google adword tool i didn't find 5400. it is only showing around 500-1000 exact searches, so how they are calculating these exact searches.. Here i am posting my screenshot please check - http://i46.tinypic.com/ezs7b.jpg

    | xplodeguru
    0

  • II'm a little confused by how the SEO Moz keywords relate to our page keywords. Should all the keywords we put in SEO Moz be in our page keywords? Can our SEO Moz keywords span the kepywords of severla pages or do we need ot tighten up and only use 5 for example keywords in SEO Moz and on our pages? Thanks!

    | THMCC
    0

  • Hi, I have employed a copywriter to write copy for client's new site and I need to make sure that I'm going to get SEO friendly copy. The client is a high end builder. I have a couple of questions... 1. At the moment, she is intending to keep the copy really brief for humans as the intention is just to get people to call up and book an introductory appointment and she believes that potential clients won't want to read a lot of text - just enough to get them to call. She is currently suggesting only 100 words per page (including the home page) but this seems really low to me - is this going to harm search rankings? What's the minimum number of words per page that I should ask for? 2. Doing keyword research using the Google keyword tool shows that the most popular keywords are for things like 'builders manchester' (i.e. service in plural followed by location). However, these phrases are quite difficult to write for. She wants to leave these phrases to be photo captions and then use much easier phrases such as 'builders in manchester' in the rest of the copy. She says that Google ingnores small words like 'in' so 'builders in manchester' will actually count as 'builders manchester'. Is this true? For the location I am targeting, the equivalent of 'builders in manchester' gets many less searches than 'builders manchester' according to Google's keyword tool set to exact match. Are the recent Panda/Penguin updates likely to have changed the answers to the above questions (especially question 1)? Thanks in advance for your help 🙂

    | StrayCat
    0

  • When optimising for a local based service, lets say a painter in texas, you will have various keyword phrases which are relevant e.g Texas painter Painter in Texas Painter Texas I have found that often the phrase which has the most searches is: [Service] [Location]  = ('Painter Texas' in this example) But unlike the other phrases this is very hard to work into a natural sounding sentence or heading. Is the best practice to try and target the unnatural sounding phrase anyway due to the higher search volume, or target the next one down to stay natural sounding in your copy? thanks d

    | dnaynay
    1

  • Is there a good reliable tool for getting search volume for local keywords. The adwords keyword tool is nice but I am wanting to know which cities get which portion of the local traffic they present.

    | webfeatseo
    0

  • Hi Guys, I'm trying to figure out why a site is ranking for a keyword. Keyword is "guitar strings" They have only implemented the following techniques: -Chosen keyword is within Meta title -Chosen keyword is used 8 times within content What else would make them rank so highly? Thanks, Dan

    | Sparkstone
    0

  • I am launching a series of geographically specific sites to support my main website. Is there any problem with targeting the same keywords on both sites?

    | theLotter
    0

  • Hello, I'm relatively new to SEO and looking to find a good tool for estimating the search traffic volume of different keywords in order to focus efforts on higher yielding terms. Right now I'm using Google's traffic estimator but it doesn't seem to have much data for long-tail keywords. Is anything else out there better or more accurate? Thank you!

    | rawberg
    0

  • Hi, If you are in the US then it's Mobile Carrier. The rest of the world it's Mobile Operator. Now I know that Google already knows that optimize and optimise are the same - just different spelling. You can rank for the keyword regardless of the spelling. My question is does the same apply to completely different words? thanks Spencer

    | Zoostr
    0

  • Hello Is there anyway to get one of my site so show in Google suggestive search? What determines position in serach bar? Thanks

    | TP_Marketing
    0

  • Is it not working? I have not been able to use it for the past 2 or so days.

    | JohnWalker
    0

  • Hello, ive been getting some good organic traffic lately, i always run the live real time analytics and have noticed that the site is ranking for very broad terms and not specific exact keywords that i have the pages optimized for. Is there a reason for this? thx

    | TP_Marketing
    0

  • No. of searches for some query in Google Keyword Tool for a specific country shows data for last 12 months or for last 1 month? Please reply. 6hHTw.png

    | ksbnok
    0

  • I'm seeing this result in the 'Change' column on my keyword report.

    | Ellsworth
    0

  • Hello guys, so I'm still wet behind the ears and am currently reading SEO an Hour a Day, as well as going through the Moz tutorial. But I do have a question that's been confusing me a bit. I've been doing keyword research here and there and I will get a "Highly Competitive" keyword (61%) at times. So then I try to go through each of the top 10 pages to see the anchors that they've used and how many backlinks there are to that page. A lot of the times the page with have 0 backlinks and a very low page authority (like 1) but it will still rank in 2, or 3. So what exactly makes it competitive? I know I must be missing something super simple here! Maybe I'm not accurately assessing the anchor/backlinks to that specific keyword. I use backlinkwatch, opensite explorer and the keyword difficulty report. Thanks guys!

    | seochump
    0

  • When i search "Song for a stormy night nhaccuatui" (nhaccuatui is nhaccuatui.com) URL: https://www.google.com.vn/search?q=Song+for+a+stormy+night+nhaccuatui&pws=0&hl=en Google result bold Zing - Google may have trouble doing that? This may affect the SEO cause of nhaccuatui or not? P/S: Sorry for my English. xiT4a.png

    | LeQuy
    0

  • Hey, Need to buy a domain name and obviously can not get example.co.nz. Was wondering... can I do examplehq.co.nz is this better for seo or should I find something else. This is for an ecommerce website and I can't use shop or store after it... it's casino related any ideas would be much appreciated.

    | bonmaklad
    0

  • Hi We are trying to export data from the recent reports section of keyword analysis. The tool is only remembering the past 300 search terms and no recent ones. These span over 6 months. Is there any way we could clear the recent reports section so we could export only the data which is most recent. Regards

    | dunelm
    0

  • The following article implies that 2,400 isn’t bad……Quote from second to last paragraph of #2: “The real problem comes when you choose to target a keyword like 'ladies leather handbags' which has a broad match search volume of 2,400 but an exact match search volume of only 260” http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-keyword-research-mistakes-you-might-be-making I like to keep mine under 50% competitive.  For one site which is in high competition market (as far I can see) has SEO irrelevant brand name domain, a primary key word at 51% with 2900 Global EM for page name with a secondary keyword at 44% and 590 GEM. Another site with primary domain and keyword at 50% and 1000 GEM with other keywords between 40% and 50% and GEM’s of 1300 (also a page title), 1900 (also page title), 1000 (also a page title), 2400, 5400, 14800 (niche I might work on later), 1000, 1900, 4400, 3600, 5400, 1600, 3600 (also a page title), 1300, 1000, 2900, 1300. SEO won’t be my only approach but within my competitive capability I think that’s the best I can get. So, wondering what your thoughts where on a good Global Exact Match?

    | Zoolander
    0

  • Good evening, I hava a questiong regardin the ranking after 10th August. I hava an online tire shop and the ranking has changed that means I was on the first position on search term "anvelope" and now I am on the 3 rd place. I have unique content, few duplicate content and still in front of my site there are sites with huge duplicate content and not so unique. Is it a coincidence that the position has changed on the 10 August or I was affected by Emanuel? How Emanuel update can affect an online tire shop? In other city's I am on the firs place. My site is www.anvelope.ro Thank's Florin

    | Vreaumobila
    0

  • I have been monitoring the query data (keywords, average position, CTR, etc.) in GWT, but sometimes the ranking data seems off. I filter the dates for the past week, so it is the most recent. I manually check some of the rankings and they are way off. Does anyone have feedback on this? If you have access to multiple domain data, that would be great. What is the most accurate way of determining keywords you currently rank for? I have also used keywordspy, and that is off too!

    | inhouseseo
    0

  • Hello fellow mozzers! I've been struggling with my title tag and would like to get your opinion. We provide IT services in the Los Angeles area. I've been doing keyword research for the past week and found about 400 keywords from various sources. I then looked at my top 5 competitors on Google and analyzed their homepage title tags, the most common keywords that they use in their title tags are: IT Support Los Angeles
    Computer Support Los Angeles
    Network Consulting Los Angeles
    Network Support Los Angeles
    IT Services Los Angeles Since it is recommended to have your title tag under 70 characters I've compiled the following title tag for my home page: IT Services, Network Consulting, IT and Network Support in Los Angeles which is exactly 70 characters, however my company name is an additional 9 characters, I think it would be wise to include in the title tag of the home page however I can't decide if I should exceed the limit by including the company name to the title tag or should I remove something from the title tag and then add the company name? 1. What do you guys think, is that a good title tag to use as is? 2. Should I add the company name without removing any keywords or remove  a keyword? 3. I'm trying to target local traffic since I can't compete with the big dogs yet, so I want to be in the SERPs when someone searches IT Services Los Angeles, IT Support Los Angeles, etc... Do I need to add Los Angeles after each keyword, or I can use a single instance of Los Angeles like in the example title tag that I have? 4. For the other remaining 400+/- keywords I want to use some of them to create static pages and some for blog posts, is that the way to go? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!!! Thank you!!!

    | igor.pinchevskiy
    0

  • Looking to start an Ads Word Campaign. Any words of advice?? How can I use SEoMoz to help with Adwords?

    | CapitolShine
    0

  • I have done a lot of research on Google AdSense (e.g. how to get started, best practices, how much money can be made, custom channels). I want to write a blog post based on my research, but my question is -- how can I learn what are the most common questions about Google AdSense or Internet advertising from a keyword search perspective? For example, are more people searching for "How to make money with AdSense" vs "How to make money with Internet advertising" vs "How to make money with a website"? How do I know which phrase is searched most? It seems to me that I should make my page title, URL, H1, etc. exactly match (or as close as possible within proper grammar) the question that is most often searched. Thanks everyone! Ryan

    | GreenHatWeb
    0

  • What is the most accurate tool to check the current ranking of keywords in bulk and download the report via CSV/Excel? Any input would be appreciated.

    | inhouseseo
    0

  • Thoughts on exact match domains to keywords? If your domain isn't an exact match, do you recommend buying another domain and getting a 301 redirect?

    | Kflo
    0

  • E.g. how to use that info. to better my keyword choices?

    | Kflo
    0

  • We are launching a new blog for one of our B2B business'sand I wondering what's the best keyword research software / approach for deciding blog categories and topics for a B2B company blog? Any suggestions would be very awesome! Rochelle 🙂 PS - also what's the best way to keep our keyword silo's organized?

    | RochelleRietow
    0

  • Two questions about checking the rank of keywords. The easiest way to say this is by example. I have a keyword that SEOMOZ ranks on google in the 32nd position but when I look for that keyword in Google it's nowhere to be found (it's buried deep in the results pages somewhere). Where does SEOMOZ get its keyword results from? How do I non-localize my browser so I can see "global" keyword results? Is there such a thing? thanks in advance.

    | dpdeleon1
    0

  • If I ranked top on google for a keyword for Exact  Local Search Count say 2000.How much of the Exact Global Search Count of 4000 contribute to  Exact Local Search Count

    | Frost
    0

  • Hello, I have made some changes to my site within the last 1 1/2 months and have not seen my keyword ranking improve whatsoever; however, my page rank has gone up.  I have made all the changes that my campaign suggested, and yet there is still no change to my keyword rank.  Please advise me on what I'm doing incorrectly or what I should change. Thank you

    | thelearningman
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.