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Category: Keyword Research

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

  • 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__
    0
  • 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
    0
  • fraserhannah


    Hi, I usually use Wordtracker for my keyword research but was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions other than Google, or a company that just serves up Google's results. Thanks Fraser

    | fraserhannah
    0
  • NiallTom


    In general, does having a large number of meta keywords listed in a page's meta keywords line dilute effort? On other words, should I focus on optimizing for 1 or 2 keywords per page to keep my efforts focused and increase the probability of ranking better for those 1 or 2.....or should I put down all the keywords I would "like" to rank for? Thank You

    | NiallTom
    0
  • limens


    Can someone please give me links to the most valuable tools that I can use to quickly find the most important keywords (highest # of google searches) for my niche. I know of google adwords tool, wondering if there is something better. Thanks

    | limens
    0
  • onlinemediadirect


    I am aways being my worst critique and constantly looking to improve. Thats how you become a winner right ! something I feel I can improve on is Keyword analysis and targeting. I would really appreciate hearing stories of other SEO's on here , gaining an insight into the techniques you use and how your keyword analysis has evolved as time has gone by. Thanks in advance.

    | onlinemediadirect
    1
  • gaji


    Hi, I run a photography site: www.joeyvalyphotography.com   and my main keyword is Orlando Wedding Photographers . I have been trying to improve my rankings but i have gone no where. I would greatly appreciate some tips, on getting my site up there higher on the ranks, some day! Thanks in advanced, Joey

    | gaji
    0
  • GroundFloorSEO


    Hello all.  This is my first interaction with SEOmoz, and I am still in my learning phases.  I currently own a lawn fertilization company near Allentown, PA.  I do the site for myself, and I am ranked number one for organic lawn care for my cities.  My question may seem kind of elementary, but I just want to clear this up for myself.  I want to start a side business doing SEO, and from what I gather step one is keyword research.  I plan on building new sites to start as opposed to going in and fixing existing ones.  So, I've been reading a lot on how to do keyword research and so forth.  I will use my current business as a reference for my question.  Should my main keywords be along the lines of "lawn care" and "lawn services", and then the location specific stuff be seperate?  Or should my main keywords be "lawn care allentown, pa"?  I plan on running my business solely for local businesses, so I am not to interested in competing with the entire world for keywords.  I just wasn't sure how to differentiate my keyword research for local business.  I hope that question made some sense.  I am really starting to grasp the elements of SEO, but for some reason the keyword part of things perplexes me.  Thanks for any responses!

    | GroundFloorSEO
    0
  • StreetwiseReports


    I have a website where I target basic training recruits going into the military. But this dang trend going around where "civilians" are signing up for these boot camp classes are throwing off my thinking that most of the traffic for keywords like basic trianing and boot camp are meant for these civlians. How can i best find the keywords that will target military recruit? I am looking for some good anchor texting keywords.

    | StreetwiseReports
    0
  • TheGroom


    In my google web tools. the keywords that are about my site are not being crawled. I have them in my Meta descriptions and keyword meta, but still arne't showing in significant keyword list for google.

    | TheGroom
    0
  • iprosoftware


    Can anyone please recommend the best keyword research tools available, we specialise in the travel industry and struggle to find new keywords as the more niche ones always show no traffic searches in the google keyword tool so it is really difficult to make a judgement.  We know from google analytics that some niche keywords really are useless and while they are no. 1 they generate no traffic. I hope you can help Thanks! Andy

    | iprosoftware
    0
  • Designbuddy


    I've been given some terms with no noticeable traffic in the Keywords research tool, but have a moderately high PPC value - why is that and are they worth pursuing if they have no recordable traffic? FYI, this may be a newbie assumption on my part that -- means no noticeable traffic... Thanks guys!

    | Designbuddy
    0
  • globalcampus


    Using the keyword tool Ive noticed theres Exact match and Broad Match , Exact match is always way less . Is exact match only when a person puts the keyword in quotes? or is that the number of times when a person puts in the exact keyword. ? I see that google adwords only puts the broadmatch.

    | globalcampus
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    For example, for the keyword phrase 'the history of the united states,' how would you determine whether or not to include 'the' or 'of' in the title, description, and URL? Do you tend to use stop words or not in your keyword optimization? Why or why not?

    | nicole.healthline
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, For our site thewealthymind(dot)com what keywords do you think I should be targeting, I assume it is not enough just to get keywords from Google Analytics history. Thanks!

    | BobGW
    0
  • JoshTurner


    I'd like to provide a keyword research report to a client, that includes all of the keywords we're targeting, organized nicely along with relevant data for each (keyword difficulty, search volume, etc.).  Is there a way to do this other than running an individual report for each keyword?  I'd like to avoid sending them a 50 page document showing all of the keyword research 😉 Thanks for any help! Josh

    | JoshTurner
    0
  • jargomang


    Is there a tool or resource that provides top keywords by country or language? Something like https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/top-keywords.html

    | jargomang
    0
  • NiallTom


    I've seen this touched on in other posts but have read conflicting answers and am hoping to get some clarification.  What should my keyword strategy be for an e-commerce site in an industry that has moderate to high competition for it's short-tail keyword phrases? Should I try to optimize my homepage for the highly competitive, short-tail keywords, while going after the long-tail, and less competitive (but less traffic, too) on my product pages?  What's a good rule of thumb as far as the number of keyword phrases to target per product? Thank you

    | NiallTom
    0
  • slipnot


    I want to change all of the title tags on my website by adding a couple of more keywords (not keyword stuffing) but our previous media company chose words that were not aas relevant as ones I found.  However I was warned this is a bad idea, it will make traffic drop and if it works we will only see about 5% increase to pages.  Please advise.  Should I change them and hwo should I do it? One by one slowly while changing content to match or all at once?

    | slipnot
    0
  • ZakGottlieb71


    Exact match is perfectly easy for me to get my head around - broad match, not so much! Take the phrase, "removing blueberry stains." Is the broad match data for this that I'm seeing in the Google keyword tool for searches that involve any of these particular words, in any phrase, in any order - just so long as they're all there? Any help with this concept would be much appreciated.

    | ZakGottlieb71
    0
  • lwilkins


    I designed a website a month ago and found moderate keywords to use through the SEOmoz tool. Now when I search them again, they are all highly competitive. Is it seasonal? Should I redo the keywords?

    | lwilkins
    0
  • TheHecksler


    Hey, On Keyword Difficulty Tool: pls explain, whats the exact different between broad match and exact match. Thx. Seb. 🙂

    | TheHecksler
    0
  • matthewbyers


    Good morning! I'm working on building out a new website for a regional insurance agency specializing in auto insurance for high risk drivers (ex. Tickets, Accidents, Dui's, etc.). Due to the competitive nature of our industry, I believe it is best to focus on very localized long tail keywords, instead of broad terms I don't have any chance of ranking for. Our keyword research indicates that there is an opportunity to optimize and potentially rank for keywords that include geographic modifiers for towns and cities within a roughly 50 mile radius. The problem is, there is only so much you can say about auto insurance. On the one hand, I would like to have individual landing pages for each keyword phrase. On the other hand, I don't want to look manipulative to Google or hurt user experience by creating a bunch of pages with relatively similar content. Can anyone offer some advice on how I can structure the site/content to optimize for each geographic modifier without having lots of pages that are very similar? Thank you!

    | matthewbyers
    0
  • waynekolenchuk


    If you use the Google keyword tool while logged in to your Google profile, will the keyword tool attempt to show you regional or local suggestions?

    | waynekolenchuk
    0
  • bakergraphix_yahoo.com


    I prepared a report yesterday morning and I had a variety of keywords ranking at #5. Today when checked from another location they are all over the place. kitchen mats has been 11-15 for months, and then when checking from a school computer that starts a new session upon each login Yesterday it was #5 as was anti fatigue mats - it has been 27-32. Is google pulling in local hits and shifting the serp rankings? the site is www.wellnessmats.com any there suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I know we have had duplicate content issues, and now reading some of the posts - perhaps "key word cannibalization"? thanks

    | bakergraphix_yahoo.com
    0
  • danlae


    Hi Our E-com website went from 8th to 1st spot yesterday for our most important keyword (barneklær = childrens clothing) on google.no weirdly enough we arent ranking on first page at all on google.com . I find this very strange especially since the keyword itself is so country specific - mainly because of the norwegian specific letter - æ. The results are not due to personalization i ve check it with the keyword difficulty tool here on seomoz. The sites ranking higher then me on google.com are sites i am ranking higher then on google.no. Anyone got a good explanation ? The changes for my keyword  in ranking i saw yesterday was alot more then i am used to see - almost like google made some sort of script change. we went from 8th to 1st. 1st dropped to 4th, 5ht went to 2nd etc - i  am not used to seeing this big changes. Anyone got a clue to either of these 2 questions ?

    | danlae
    0
  • TRICORSystems


    I have a navigation menu at the top of my page with drop down menus that lead to different pages of my web site. Very typical navigation. If I have a page that is optimized for a particular keyword, lets say "Awesome Blue Widgets", do I want to remove that link from the navigation menu on the page awesome-blue-widgets.htm since the link uses the keyword phrase "Awesome Blue Widgets'?

    | TRICORSystems
    0
  • adriandg


    Is google autocomplete based solely off keyword search volume? Or is there some other factors i am missing here? Here's an example: Auto complete suggestions for 'storage toronto': [storage toronto cost] [storage toronto downtown] [storage toronto rates] [storage toronto leaside] [storage toronto prices] [storage toronto dupont] [storage toronto laird] [storage toronto eastern ave] [storage toronto ontario] Google adwords keyword tool results for these: <colgroup><col width="151"> <col width="129"> <col width="169"></colgroup>
    | Keyword | Global Monthly Searches | Local Monthly Searches  |
    | [storage toronto cost] | 0 | 0 |
    | [storage toronto downtown] | 36 | 28 |
    | [storage toronto rates] | 0 | 0 |
    | [storage toronto leaside] | 0 | 0 |
    | [storage toronto prices] | 73 | 73 |
    | [storage toronto dupont] | 0 | 0 |
    | [storage toronto laird] | 0 | 0 |
    | [storage toronto eastern ave] | 0 | 0 |
    | [storage toronto ontario] | 0 | 0 | So here is what i find confusing: If [storage toronto cost] is the top suggestion for [storage toronto...] then why does google say it has 0 monthly searches?  Why isn't [storage toronto downtown] the first suggestion? or better yet, why isn't [storage toronto prices] the top suggestion? So either: 1) google adwords keyword tool is wrong. or 2) google suggest isn't based on just volume?? I've run these same keywords through Bing's Excel keyword information spreadsheet query and it came back saying all keywords had 0 searches ever, except for...drumroll: [storage toronto prices]  with 7 monthly searches, once, in august, and 0 all other months. Now i assume that bing/yahoo numbers are significantly smaller, but this does show that that the same keyword is the most popular, so in some way suggests that google's keyword is accurate.  So i guess this brings be back to my confusion, what other factors is google's suggest based on, because it obviously isn't primarily search volume. And yes, i have made sure to clear caches, and disable personalized search and search history, and tried the query in several browsers, just to double check i wasn't getting a personalized list, so we can rule that out. Thanks, Storwell.

    | adriandg
    0
  • brianmeert


    The Keyword Ranking Report currently shows site traffic and Google SERP. Is there anyway to also show google traffic estimator next to these numbers?

    | brianmeert
    0
  • theLotter


    I want measure my ranking for keywords in various countries and search engines. If I use a tool such as rank checker to determine my rank for google.uk, google.au.com, etc... is that accurate, or does my IP still affect the rankings I see? If I use a VPS such as Hide My Ass (or another product you would recommend), would that make my ranking results more accurate? I also want to measure my ranking in Russia, where Yandex is very strong so a tool to measure my Yandex ranking + Google would be ideal. What method you would recommend to accurately determine my rankings in different countries? Thank you!

    | theLotter
    0
  • jasonlewisdiiigy


    Hello everyone, After watching keyword research for motivated marketers (pro webinar), I've put together a master framework. This works like a charm, however, I'm having trouble with a few categories. They are picking up keywords that are not in the marker that are assigned to the category. For example, I have one category with 10 simple markers like red, green, blue, but when I apply the filter, the results include words that are outside these markers like Career One. .  Baffled! Anyone help? Thank you in advance. J

    | jasonlewisdiiigy
    0
  • dools


    In my keywords should they include the city name or not? Example.....  plastic surgery     or    plastic surgery Orlando I know the search engine knows what city i am in, if i search for plastic surgery and i live in Orlando, does it pull up world wide plastic surgery links first or local plastic surgery clinics? Thanks in advance. Daniel

    | dools
    0
  • waynekolenchuk


    For the same keyword phrase,the Google Adwords Keyword Tool complete list of keyword ideas does not contain all the keyword phrases that appear in "searches related to..." at the bottom of the page when you plug the same keyword phrase into Google. Can anyone tell me why not?

    | waynekolenchuk
    0
  • vittana_seo


    We're looking for ways to drive traffic to our site through targeted keywords, but because our non-profit is unique (micro-loans for students in developing countries) it is unlikely that people will be using such a keyword. We're looking for other keywords to target searchers who might be interested in giving micro-loans for students or at least are interested in microfinance in general. Eventually we do want to win for keywords like "microfinance" but these are a little competitive for us right now. Any suggestions/ideas? NOTE: We're running a blogging contest soon which should be a great opportunity for links with specific anchor text.

    | vittana_seo
    0
  • NICK_PATE


    I have several pages that rank high on google with very similar content should I redirect one of these pages to the other? Example www.vanceautogroup.com/ford-inventory/ www.vanceautogroup.com/dealers-in-oklahoma-city/ford-dealer-in-oklahoma-city Should I use a 301 Redirect?

    | NICK_PATE
    0
  • blake-76624


    Hi Everyone, I was doing a little Google Trends research on Real Estate and narrowed it down to my state.  I have found that on Trends it is showing a two or three towns above the one I am living in showing that it gets a lot of search volume.  They will put the top one as a 1 and then the others below it as like .87 or .675 etc.  I am taking that as 87% of the top one or 67.5% of the top city in search volume. I checked these numbers against the Google Keyword Tool and found that my town still gets more exact visits  (4 times the amount of the one Google Trends ranks #1)  I can't see the actual search volume on Google Trends but was wondering....Which one do you trust? I have done some testing on it and realized that for the most part, the numbers in the keyword tool RARELY change.  Do they maybe update it once per year? FYI: As you know I trended real estate so what I did on the Keyword tool is "Town State Real Estate" and looked at both Broad and Exact searches. I would appreciate any guidance you guys can give on how I should be paying attention to this data. Thanks!

    | blake-76624
    0
  • echo1


    What would be the best Title of your Homepage if your top 3 keywords would be: taxi service Seattle (5400 exact searches) Seatle taxi                 (4400 exact searches) Seattle taxi service (1900 exact searches) Would you go for all of them or just the one with more searches? I guess you can target them all on one page being almost the same but what is the best strategy to apply in this case to get the most out of it? Do you take into account the broad numbers of searches which are different from the exact numbers? Tools I used:Google sktool Thanks for reading!

    | echo1
    0
  • joshcanhelp


    I've been seeing this more and more... a page that ranks well for a great keyword but the traffic is much, much less than one would expect based on information from the Google Keyword Tool. The keyword gets 3600 searches locally, but the site, #9 on the SERP, got 11 visits last month. Does that sound like a plausible drop-off or is there something else at play? Thanks!

    | joshcanhelp
    0
  • barabis77


    Hey anyone noticed Google's keyword tool seems to be returning weird data for search volume compared to just a few days ago? "iron fist clothing" exact match was returning around 1,000 local monthly searches and a monthly trend of approximately the same over the past year. As of yesterday it has zero searches for exact match and even the monthly trends have all been set to zero for every month going back a year Now I suppose this could happen in theory but the fact that the trend is showing up as zero for each month over the last year makes me think this could be a bug. I've also noticed this for one of my keywords on my SEO site, again suddenly gone to zero searches and monthly trends going back a year. However a quick check on webmaster tools shows the impressions going back a few months at the average of 1,300 that the old trend suggested it should be. Anyone else noticed this?

    | barabis77
    0
  • laurieonorio


    Does it help, hurt or do nothing for SEO to utilize long-tail keyword URLs to point to specific pages of your website. For example, you're a vet and have your business name website, but what if you bought: CharlotteVeterinarianforCats.com CharlotteVeterinarianforDogs.com etc. and pointed them to specific pages in your business website.

    | laurieonorio
    0
  • iung


    I'm looking for a tool to help with keyword research, and judging by the presentation and few reviews I could find, SECockpit at http://swissmademarketing.com/secockpit/ seems to be a nice product. They pull their data (partly) from SEOmoz, which is a good sign. Any feedback ? Thx Gil

    | iung
    1
  • boxcarpress


    We’ve made pages with resources for our customers. These pages have been well received and gotten us some good traffic. But these pages only target our main keywords tangentially. If we continue to build up pages like this -- that give us traffic from our customers, but don’t directly target our main keywords -- will our target keywords -- and the pages that focus on those keywords -- suffer? Is it a zero sum game for our web site? Does increasing rankings and pages for certain keywords mean that other keywords / pages decrease as a result?

    | boxcarpress
    0
  • jamesjd7


    I ranked very well for my keywords.  They are not competitive.  Nonetheless, I got convertible traffic to my blog.  Suddenly, I run a search for the keywords and there is this other website ranking higher than me.  it seems to be a new website.  No data on opensiteexplorer.  So, the only thing that I can conclude and which I've been thinking that google does is to test new webpages out for a bit higher up on the rankings.  If the bounces are lower than average, then I suspect that they will give you better rankings in the future.  Is this somewhat how it works?

    | jamesjd7
    0
  • waynekolenchuk


    I need a tool or a method that will let me know what a search engine thinks the overall theme of the site is about. Sort of like the keyword extractor, but on a site-wide basis. Does anyone have any sugestions?

    | waynekolenchuk
    0
  • eric_gossamar


    Our client seems to get 20 - 30 visits a month to pages which people arrived on via a search, without visiting home page and navigating there. Is there a way we can identify both the phrases the person used to arrive at the page, and the page itself? The graph is tantalizing, but without deeper insight into what the phrases and pages were, we can't focus on the phrases in question. And we'd like to do this, because the phrase may represent potential long tail phrases we could use. Thanks! Eric.

    | eric_gossamar
    0
  • denimblog


    Say you are looking at a bunch of keywords and you think a competitor ranks for one of them.  Is there any simple tool  you can use to 1.  put in keyword 2.  put in domain of site RESULT - it tells you exactly where the site ranks.  Like **The site UpperYupper.com shows up on Page 3 at position 35  for the keyword "yupper undies" **

    | denimblog
    0
  • adriandg


    Just wondering if there is a Bing / Yahoo equivalent to this: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal ?? Would be nice to compare the different search patterns between the two search engines, without just assuming that the relative search volume on google for certain keywords is the same bing/yahoo.

    | adriandg
    0
  • helpwanted


    What Tools Can Be Used To Determine Kw's I Should Be Optimizing For ? My concern is that I may be optimizing certain pages with wrong kw phrases and building backlinks to wrong kw phrases that are not a good conversion keyword for the services that I am selling. What are the various ways and tools that can be used to determine if I am optimizing for the right kw's phrases and not the wrong ones that will not convert into a lead from the optin form. I am wondering if ppc spy tools such as spyfu, semrush help me identify if I in fact am opitimizing for the right kw's ?

    | helpwanted
    0
  • design_man


    I'm looking to optimise my website for some keywords and keyphrases I'm getting a bit confused on how different pages might compete (or help) each other. As we are an automotive dealer I was thinking about building the hompage around 4 keywords (one for each franchise we represent e.g 'Ford'). These show high local monthly searches and medium competition for just the manufacturer name on its own. Then if someone drills down into a franchise homepage (linked from our homepage e.g. www.ourwebsite.com/ford) I was thinking to optimise the page around e.g. 'Ford Dealer' (which has medium local monthly searches and high competition). Then if someone drills down into a particular model I optimise around that and so on. Question is will I be playing the franchise homepage vs the group homepage (Ford vs Ford Dealer) as I have read here on Keyword Cannibalization? Or will it work together? Alternative I guess is not to focus around a franchise on the group homepage and then only focus on the franchise from the franchise homepage onwards but I feel I would be missing a trick? As a new kid on the block help will be most appreciated.

    | design_man
    0
  • helpwanted


    NOTE: Lost on how to use this keyword difficulty tool, what is the objective of this tool - I am using micro niche finder which tells me how difficult a kw will be to rank for based on backlinks to that kw phrase ( ANY TRAINING VIDEOS ON SEOMOZ FOR THIS TOOL ) Need what is the quick takeaway of the use and benefit of this tool Is this kw research tool on seomoz Similar or Differeent to  market samari  or google free kw research adwords tool ? If it is similar to wordtracker or google free adwords  research tool then how is it similar and then how does it differ ? I guess what I am trying to gather where does it get its data from wordtrakcer have their own unique data it pulls from different data centers from the various different search engines if I remember correctly ... Just ran the report offered at keyword difficulty and was asked compare these 10 top to a website address so I put mine the box there hope I did the right thing if not then what i did wrong !!!!!

    | helpwanted
    0

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