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Category: Keyword Research

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

  • Boodreaux


    Is their an optimum number of total words for your home page?  How many keywords should one attempt to get ranked on that one page if your website is new?  If your content is graded at a post-graduate level how many times is the maximum # to mention your key word or words for SEO. Thank you,

    | Boodreaux
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  • Boodreaux


    If I knew what to look for I would do it myself. But I want it done now. The words would relate to one broad category with possible gold that can be mined from 12 sub-categories categories.  In my preliminary seat of the pants research I didn't find much in the sub-categories but there were around 10 key words in the broad categories.  I am getting a lot of long tail words ranked but I don't believe there is hardly any traffic. Does anyone know what a reasonable estimate is for this degree of keyword research? Also if anyone would like to submit a bid for this work please personal email me. Utah Tiger.

    | Boodreaux
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  • bcarp88


    I am a new pro member and have noticed that a lot of my keywords are very similar. i.e. "piano movers Atlanta" vs. "Atlanta piano movers" vs. "piano movers in Atlanta" Is there an accurate way to see search counts for each of these terms do determine which one I should target? Does anyone have any recommended tools or strategies?

    | bcarp88
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  • TRICORSystems


    I've been reading a lot about keyword cannibalization and I'm worried that some of my sub pages may be pulling rank from my home page. If I'm trying to rank my home page for the keyword phrase "blue widget manufacturing" and I have sub pages with the titles "blue manufacturing services", "blue widget enginnering", "medical widget manufacturing" is it possible that those pages could be causing me to commit keyword cannibalization? I'm looking at a lot of the results for my keyword phrase and they don't seem to have additional pages with similar keyword phrases. Wondering if I should change my titles so they don't look as optimized.

    | TRICORSystems
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  • debi_zyx


    I wasn't sure whether to classify this as a discussion or a question.  I'd love "the right answer" but I'm not sure if we're going to get one... Let's try. When you use the Adwords Keyword Tool for doing keyword research, do you use the numbers from "broad match" or "exact match" when comparing relative search volume of keywords?  (And yes, I know the numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, but when it comes down to it, you're using the numbers to compare and come to conclusions regarding the best keyword to use - so which match type gives you the data you're looking for?) To be a little more specific - when you select "exact match" for, let's say the keyword "baking supplies", is that telling you how many people searched for that phrase within quotes <"baking supplies">, or how many people searched for only <baking supplies="">, as opposed to that word within a phrase <baking supplies="" stores="">or with the words reversed <supplies baking="">?</supplies></baking></baking> Based on some keyword research we had done a year ago where any phrase reversals like <water bottles="">and <bottles water="">were coming out with the exact same numbers, even when it wasn't so intuitive that there would be the same search volume, we came to the conclusion - with the tentative suggestion of the SEOMoz staff on the old Q & A - that broad match would include all instances of the keywords in reverse order, so if you wanted to know how many people were searching for <water bottles="">only, you needed to use exact match.  </water></bottles></water> That's what we did for about a year (I also think I saw Rand mention that somewhere in a presentation slide recently, although I could be mistaken and I don't recall exactly where it was to check it up) and then based on a recent forum discussion I had where someone was questioning that premise, I did another check with two KW reversals and while <water bottles="">and <bottles water="">still give the same number, <baking supplies="">and <supplies baking="">do not.  </supplies></baking></bottles></water> So I'm left with a big question here as to what the best policy is.  Google Adwords Help is very vague on what the match type means in the tool (it seems to be talking about only your settings for your campaigns).  So - any input after this long saga? Thanks!

    | debi_zyx
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  • TRICORSystems


    I'm wondering how Google calculates local search volume in the keywords tool without specifying a city or a region. Is it just an average of the different regions or states?

    | TRICORSystems
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  • buntrosgali


    Hey everyone, new to this game, but been working hard to learn, have a website for an independant insurance broker in Northern Ireland, I have been using adwords and insights to try find good keywords to build his site around. But really struggling to find any keywords which people in Northern ireland are searching for, that are not in high competition. Anyone give me a pointer how i could better identify the keywords i seek 🙂

    | buntrosgali
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  • frankthetank2


    Very new to SEO and wondering if I am wasting my time/money on something that is not possible.   The top 3-5 keywords I want to place have top results offered by a .gov, wikipedia article (title is my keyword) and about.com. My gut tells me that I could work my tail off for the next few years creating content and links and never be able to out rank these sites so I might be better off just buying ads for those terms.   Before I make any decisions I wanted to get some perspective from the experts. Thanks!

    | frankthetank2
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  • dseevers


    I added new keywords to my campaign. They do appear in my ranking report. But I am not getting any ranking data on the new keywords. It looks like they are yet to be crawled. For my initial set of keywords, i see the specific rankings in each search engine and for some it says "not in the top 50." For the new ones all I see are zeros. Will the ranking data eventually appear?

    | dseevers
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  • drillingtrader


    http://www.drillingtrader.com I am wanting to combine; oilfield classifieds
    drilling classifieds
    oilfield services classifieds A keyword phrase generator reflected; oilfield classifieds drilling classifieds oilfield services classifieds [oilfield classifieds drilling classifieds oilfield services classifieds] or oilfield classifieds drilling classifieds oilfield services classifieds "oilfield classifieds drilling classifieds oilfield services classifieds" or oilfield classifieds drilling classifieds oilfield services classifieds +oilfield +classifieds +drilling +classifieds +oilfield +services +classifieds I don't know which keyword phrase would be most effective, nor do I understand if I am to combine the two lines, utilized in a keyword phrase or just one.

    | drillingtrader
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  • Timvroom


    The keywords that I target are phrases that wouldn't ever be used in a sentence... Ex: Stained Concrete Virginia My question is... Is it better to use the phrase, even though its odd? Ex: Stained Concrete Virginia is a great product Or is it better to make it a natural sentence? Ex: Stained Concrete in Virginia is a great product? Im trying to find a way to use my keyword phrases at least 4 times in the content of the pages...but it seems difficult if I have to use such an odd phrase. Thanks! Tim

    | Timvroom
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  • bunac1


    I have found similar questions on the forum but is there a best keyword tool to use or is it a case of  using a few and cross referecing them?

    | bunac1
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  • CocoMagenta


    I have read many articles about keyword stuffing and density. What precentage of your webpage should the keyword density be as I am a bit concenred that I will get a warning from google about keyword stuffing. Lets say I have a website selling books, it is only natural for the keyword book to show up as a high precentage. All advice appreciated.

    | CocoMagenta
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  • TBiz


    I've been pursuing an internet startup for over a year now.  We've figured a lot of things out along the way and even managed to start making some modest revenue ~$3,000/month. We're just now starting to dig into SEO and I'm realizing that most of our keywords aren't very high volume.  The best have 1,000 local searches per month (exact match) with most being a couple hundred local searches. I'm worried that I've picked a market that's too small, but I don't have the SEO experience to know if this is normal or not.  Most of my keywords are rated 'highly competitive' and also are stacked with CPC ads upon Google search. I'd love to know what others' experience with keyword volume is and if I'm just overreacting on limited knowledge. Thanks!

    | TBiz
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  • wianno168


    I publish before and after photos of plastic surgery procedures-breast implnats tiummy tuck etc. I use word press. What are best keywords, category labels and tags to get best ranking in before and after photo posts

    | wianno168
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  • Xee


    I run a Chicago Bears forum and my long-term goal to make it the most popular Bears forum on the internet (I know, huge goal). Because of that, I've been focusing on optimizing it for the keywords 'chicago bears forum'. However, being new to SEO, I only checked now and saw the search volume for those keywords is barely 2,000. My question is, and this is probably an an obvious one, should I be switching my focus to more popular keywords such as 'chicago bears news' if I want to increase traffic to my forum?

    | Xee
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  • adriandg


    I realize one can use the google adwords keyword tool to get rough organic search volume, but Is there a method to see how much a keyword is searched within specifically google places?  That is, seperated out from the organic search? Ideally i would like to see how often certain keywords are search for in google, v.s. in google places/maps directly. maybe it is not possible. cheers, storwell

    | adriandg
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  • pauledwards


    Hi guys, as we know there's been some Google updates today. Has anyone noticed a change in ppc? is there any connection? Any info much appreciated.

    | pauledwards
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  • webtarget


    Hi, Many times, when I look up a keyword in google using their Keyword Tool, the competition might be low or medium, but, it doesn't seem close to the keyword difficulty on SEOMoz. For example, I looked up fantasy sports. It's low competition on Google. I thought, wow, that's amazing. How can that be when it's so popular? Huge search volume, low competition. Then, SEOMoz says 76% difficulty. It sort of shatters my enthusiasm all of a sudden. Maybe I have to change the order of how I look at it 🙂 What is the difference that's going on? What would be considered low keyword difficulty on SEOMoz? How about medium and high? I know someone might argue that for some guru, what's hard for one person isn't hard for the guru, but, for the average webmaster who does some seo, uses SEOMoz, and some other SEO tools, is there some general breakdown? Thanks.

    | webtarget
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  • mof3kz


    My site sells products (+1000s) and we have a few pages about how-to's, tips, etc. But when you search for keywords that are relevant to the products, the guides show up as search results. For example, if we search for "red widgets", the page for "how to make widgets" shows in the SERP and not the "red widgets" product page. This doesn't make sense when most of the search results go to our guides and not to the product pages. How can I change this? Do I permanent remove these guides? Or rename the title, description? My guess is that other sites have linked to these guides so they are making our site more of a "guide" site as opposed to the products we sell. Any advice/recommended would be appreciated.

    | mof3kz
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  • BostonWright


    Generally I use the Google Keyword Tool for my keyword research, but given the fact that the data is either country specific or global, I was wondering what others use for regional/dma-specific keyword discovery. Regional traffic is very important to my site, so I'm hoping to find a tool that I can use to find keywords germane to my audience.

    | BostonWright
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  • ShaneO


    Hello, I'm writing some on-going Q&A type blog posts and perform KW research for each post; however, there are a few where the question is not a popular topic at all and because of this, there are no KWs to target. I've checked a few sources. The question needs to be answered and i'm trying to get as much SEO value as i can. Just wondering how have you gone about this? Just answer the question and it will naturally target the long tail?

    | ShaneO
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  • vijayvasu


    hello MOzzers, I know some words are not as important whenGoogle indexes or crawls ex the word "the" etc. I am curios what weightage google places on the word " google" when people search. Silly question?? maybe hee hee, but I would like to know. Its been bugging me. Thank you so much, V

    | vijayvasu
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  • Mrupp44


    I can't decide which is best for my needs for keyword research? I have heard a lot of great things about both? Does anybody think the free version of market samurai is enough for good keyword research? Thank you for any thoughts and opinions............ Matthew

    | Mrupp44
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  • DenverKelly


    I'm working with a local kitchen remodeler. In reviewing the organic keyword searches for the last month I notice the word "kitchens" appearing in the top 10 keyword searches. Since I know we aren't ranking for the term "kitchens" I dug deeper. A handful of the searches are from the local area but most are one occurence of searches from cities across the US and the world. My surmise is that because there are 2.2 million searches for kitchens every month we just happen to be scraping enough of these searches, irrelevant as they are to our client, to make it look like an important keyword. Most of the visitors using this keyword are gone in seconds. Just wanted some folks to confirm what I'm thinking - that "kitchens" showing up in our top 10 keywords list is a bit of a red herring - and we should focus on more localized keyword searches.

    | DenverKelly
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  • lenineto


    Hi guys, It's my first day here ate seomoz and I got intrigued about the results from the keyword difficulty tool. Even though I do understand the results, I noticed the ranking analysis table has some highlighted cells and some of them have a dark checkmark sign inside. What exactly do they mean? I couldn't find it anywhere. Cheers from Brazil. i0tzl.png

    | lenineto
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  • WillWatrous


    I have my home page and an interior page targeting the same keyword phrase. Is this ok or would they be competing with each other?

    | WillWatrous
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  • waynekolenchuk


    Has anyone developed any useful techniques for using the category selector in the GKT? Perhaps in conjunction with a site URL. Always looking for something better

    | waynekolenchuk
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  • levalencia1


    Can someone explain me what is this? I just ran a keyword difficulty report for my keyword "refurbished printers", we are not in the top 10, and I see a table with 4 columns: page authority, Page Linking Root Domains, Domain Authority, Root Domain Linking Root Domains I have many questions here: 1. The bigger the number the better? 2. The most green the better? What about the red in the last 2 columns? 3, How can I improve an specific page to rank there and improve these numbers? 4. What does it mean the green check next to some numbers? Thanks

    | levalencia1
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  • DRTBA


    Hi everyone Within our campaign it says that we rank number 35 for a specific keyword in Google in the Unites States but when we google the specific keyword we come up as number two on the first page. Can you help me understand what the current rank is based on as well as how it's results can be different from our Google search? Thank you.

    | DRTBA
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  • lindsayjhopkins


    On the ranking page Seo Moz displays words/pages in the top 50. How can you find where that word/page is ranked if it's below 50 and say up to 200?

    | lindsayjhopkins
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  • Krizze


    This came to my mind: Can word(s) immediately following a keyword hurt the ranking for that keyword, if they together form a phrase known to Google? Should I avoid keyphrases to rank better for a single keyword? Let's say that I have a website that ranks very well for the keyword "rice". The home page title and headline might be "Rice around the world". Now let's assume I change the "around the world" to "pudding", making the title "Rice pudding", which is in fact one of the keyphrases suggested by Google Instant when one types "rice". Is it possible that Google now decides the page should not rank well for the generic "rice" search any more, because it is not about rice as such but rice pudding, and as a result the ranking for the "rice" search suffers? This would probably make sense in some cases. A "flights to Hawaii" page should not rank very highly for a generic "flights" search, but just that specific search. However a "flights online" page might be all right to rank as high as any, if the meaning is understood (in all languages).

    | Krizze
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  • iamnew


    Which tool is most reliable to do Keyword Research ? I have observed that data in Google Keywords Tool seems to fluctuate a lot. For instance a particular keyword in GKT had an exact Global Search Volume of 2800 3 days back , today it is around 1200 . I can not make decisions on such unreliable data ...

    | iamnew
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  • Seaward-Group


    Hi all, I've spent the past couple of days doing some extensive keyword research in Adwords Traffic Estimator, looking for keywords to optimise my pages. I've been searching using EXACT so I get a realistic value but I'm wondering if PHRASE is better suited for research after all its more likely someone will visit my site via a phrase match than exact? What are your thoughts on this?

    | Seaward-Group
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  • AJLComputers


    Hi everyone. I have added a couple of keywords to one of my campaigns and everytime I try to check the rankings I get the message below... Whoa! We're dusting off the cobwebs from your keyword history. Don't worry, your data is fine. Check back soon to see your updates. Any idea what's going on here or how long it'll take to get this info? Thanks.

    | AJLComputers
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  • sfmatthews


    I can't seem to get a reliable answer on this one. It seems to be split down the middle as far as who agrees and who doesn't, of course some of that content is outdated. So, for today, should I be using the meta keywords tag or not? Thanks, Steven

    | sfmatthews
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  • jenadams


    I'm needing to get SERP reports on a daily basis for about 120 keywords.  Can anyone recommend an inexpensive and accurate service for doing this? I need something more regular than once a week as many of our keywords are highly competitive. Thank you

    | jenadams
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  • agolomb


    We are looking for a keyword research tool to help with our SEO efforts for our ecommerce site.  We sell food gifts and are looking for a tool to help us identify which keywords we should go after.  Beyond Google's free tool - what tools would you recommend?  We are willing to pay for a tool.

    | agolomb
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  • DenverKelly


    I've read several times of this technique for determining if a particular keyword phrase is worth the effort of optimizing for in organic search. In Adwords create an Ad Group with a single exact match keyword phrase and let it run in Adwords until you have enough clicks to measure valid results (I've often heard 200-300 clicks). If you are unable to convert the search term via paid search, the theory goes, it's probably not worth the effort to rank top 3 for that phrase and you should put your efforts elsewhere. Do any of you use this strategy? If so, have you found the results to be pretty consistently accurate? Thanks, Mark

    | DenverKelly
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  • TRICORSystems


    I'm getting ready to distribute a press release on PRWeb and had a question regarding the proper way to optimize the headline. Should I use our targeted keywords or our brand in the headline? We don't have a really strong brand, we are not a very well know company throughout the business world. The choices would read like this: "Maker of Blue Widgets Receives Pretigous [big company name] Award" or "[Brand Name] Receives Prestigious [big company name] Award" Any thoughts? Thanks -Brandon

    | TRICORSystems
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  • Montse


    What tools can you teel me like keywordspy or SemRush that shows me what keywords my competitors are using to get traffic?

    | Montse
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  • NoahsDad


    Does anyone know of a good domain suggestion tool? I've tried some of them, but wasn't happy with the results. I'd basically like to put in some key words, and get some suggetions. Thanks.

    | NoahsDad
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  • mikedw


    What is the best way and best tool to conduct Keyword Research for my site? With the Pro service is there a way to find out better keywords to add to my website? I am receiving emails that my web site is being crawled and will be completed in seven days and so far this is not a "Report Card"? is that correct? Thanks for any information

    | mikedw
    1
  • cmoylan


    Hi guys, I'm looking for a clever domain name search service. I want to provide a list of keywords and the site will return with available .com domains relating to my search. An example - I work in the tourism niche and I want to find available travel related .com domains for about 50 locations. I provide a list of words such as "travel", "visit", "goto", "holidays", and I provide a second list with all the locations, example "London", "Paris,", "Berlin", etc... The domain search tool would then mix up my two lists of keywords and check to see if variants such as travellondon.com, londonholidays.com, gotoberlin.com, etc... are free to register. I then go off and buy those domains and have some epic wins. Does this tool exist?

    | cmoylan
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  • iamnew


    Recently I received an email from an SEO marketer with the following ranking information for my site  (image attached) ( link to image http://imgur.com/CAo4D) I am sure he ran some sort of tool to this ... Is there any tool , which can give a list of low ranking articles in my site which have high search traffic CAo4D

    | iamnew
    1
  • RustyF


    I'm seeing a lot of keywords with very little traffic but high, sometimes very high cost per click in AdWords. Can someone explain to me why this is common? I'm researching buying keywords.  With the low traffic they seem like little value but when I see people $20 a click it seems like high converting and thus maybe worth going after. But the high cost is just not making any sense to me for many of these keywords. Thanks.

    | RustyF
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  • staingurus


    I know that it's worth adding qualifiers to high value keywords to create long-tail variations which will later have the potential to rank well for the main keyword as well... My questions is, how important is it that the newly-formed keyword/phrase also be evaluated for search volume? E.g. "tips for job interviews" has a high search volume, but scores 72 in the Keyword Difficulty tool - quite high. I would therefore be tempted to create a "10 tips for job interviews" articles or something similar, yet THIS particular phrase is searched for <10 times per month... If there are not any easy-to-find qualifiers that also create a well-searched for keyword/phrase, is it still worth adding them?

    | staingurus
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  • azguy


    Okay, what is the BEST keyword research tool? I've heard all across the board, but I'm looking for preferrably a free tool, but just want to use one that can do competitive research, as well as find me a ton of long tail.

    | azguy
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  • KS__


    I have been using Google Adwords tool for keyword research until today when I signed up for 7 day trial of Wordtracker. To my astonishment the results were different with a huge margin for most of my keywords. Which of these should I trust more? Do you suggest any other tool which is better than these both and is free or affordable?

    | KS__
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  • RustyF


    I'm looking or keywords that I may have failed to target.  It would seem that the traffic data SEO MOZ provides could be  a source for that. I thought I'd look at: URLs Receiving Entrances Via Search and URLs Receiving Entrances Via Search but I can only find the top 10 results or each.  I already know my most popular keywords, I need to find ones that are not getting as much traffic as they could. Is there a way to dig down deeper into this? I'm having trouble finding the value in this information for the top 10. What am I missing? Thanks!

    | RustyF
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