Welcome to the Q&A Forum

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

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Keyword Research
Log in to post

Category: Keyword Research

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

  • barnst


    Hi, I am doing some keywords research and I just wanted to check my understanding of keyword theory. Is it best to select 1-2 keywords per page of the site? Or should you target the whole site towards a few keywords? Thanks, Barney.

    | barnst
    0
  • JesseCWalker


    Hi Mozzers, So in one of my campaigns I'm trying to optimize for "Personal Trainer Minneapolis" and "Minneapolis Personal Trainer". Would the best tactic be: Develop and optimize two pages.  One for each of these similar keywords.  (Clearly not the best UX). or Try to optimize a single page for both. Thanks for your thoughts!

    | JesseCWalker
    0
  • Sizmic


    Hello Friends, I have recently built a big site with nearly 300 pages (to begin with) and there are around 20 categories on the website. I want to get 3-4 keywords ranked for each category but I don't know how and where to begin. My site revolves around wedding industry but does not have a "Main Keyword" - not yet at least. A couple of "Main Keywords" (these keywords actually describe my website) that I thought of have ZERO traffic but I have few good keywords for each category. Can someone please suggest how do I begin with? Regards, Naimath

    | Sizmic
    0
  • 10JQKAs


    Broad, [Exact], or "Phrase"?

    | 10JQKAs
    0
  • nebbisch


    Hi All - Im just learning, would appreciate some clarification on how keywords work. Specifically: For a phrase keyword, does order matter? E.g. is 'Bridging loans UK' the same keyword as 'UK bridging loans'? Again in a phrase, do the keywords need to be adjacent? So if I had a an H1 tag on my page which was 'We provide Briding loans for the entire UK', would this be considered a match for the keyword phrase 'Bridging loans uk' ? As I understand it, optimising your site for a certain keyword involves 2 things at a basic level:a) Including that keyword on your site, and b) Getting relevant inbound links from other sites with that keyword as the anchor text. Is this correct? Are there other large scale factors? What is the balance between those 2 (or more) main factors? Which is most important?

    | nebbisch
    0
  • ShoutOut


    I am starting website focused on consumer complaints/reviews with purely User Generated content. Is there really "keyword strategy" for such sites? I can only think of analyzing competition's keywords and understanding long tail http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-big-is-your-long-tail-whiteboard-friday. Any experiences? Or ideas?

    | ShoutOut
    0
  • jasonlewisdiiigy


    Hi Moz community, I would like to request your collective wisdom. I'm new to SEO and putting together an SEO research and strategy document for the employment service I work for. Have solid skills in Google Adwords and have ran a campaign over the last two years with excellent results. But this SEO thing is a whole new world! That's why who better to turn to than the leading community for SEO professionals? 🙂 Any support, advice, tips would be most welcomed appreciated. It's an employment service and I've got a list of keywords. For example, here are some of the action words I thought could be useful: <colgroup><col width="215"> <col width="91"> <col width="65"></colgroup> [find staff] 0.79 73 [find employees] 0.97 73 [looking for staff] 0.94 58 [looking for staff] 0.94 58 [staff wanted] 0.62 58 [looking for employees] 0.94 46 [look for work] 0.77 36 [looking for workers] 0.93 36 [find workers] 0.91 36 [employee search] 0.72 28 [staff search] 0.37 28 [find an employee] 0.79 22 [search for employees] 0.71 12 [find a worker] 0.66 12 [how to find employees] 0.71 12 My questions: Where to from here? If this was a Google Adwords campaign I would place the words in, create ad copy and test response. But with SEO, are these words useful? Can you target all of these words with SEO - or am I better finding words with higher volume? How many words should I be looking to target? For example, am I only trying to find the 5 or 10 highest volume words, or is it important to target lots of words with SEO? Is it just one set of keywords per page, or can I target all the above keywords on one page? I'm a bit lost. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

    | jasonlewisdiiigy
    0
  • amandahx2


    I have a question about keyword variations. To be specific, let's say "blue upside down cars" has low competition but fairly low traffic. However, the shortened variation "upside down cars" has low competition but extremely high traffic. Can I double my bet by going ahead and using "blue upside down cars" whereby in some instances Google would refer traffic based on the entire keyword, but it would also refer traffic based on the the last part of the keyword which has the higher traffic ("upside down cars"). In this case, we would optimize around "blue upside down cars" with hopes of getting traffic for both keywords (the long tail and longer tail). Is there any reason not to pursue this strategy? I hope I made sense!

    | amandahx2
    0
  • ieremyhenry


    hi, i would love to see on my website the world "or" indexed .. i got the same problem on two websites, http://www.or-a-vendre.com/ and http://www.achat-or-de-paris.com/ i didn't find a good answer on google for that, can you help me ?? thx a lot , J.

    | ieremyhenry
    0
  • seoug_2005


    I am not able to undertand the difference in search volume for same keyword under different heading. Let me make it clear. When i enter "Drupal Developement" in adwords tool, at the top, it shows Search term (1) Keyword                      Global monthly searches drupal development                 390 Just below, it shows, Keyword ideas (100) Keyword                                       Global monthly searches drupal development                       40,500 I have selected the location U.S. My question is there is a huge difference in 390 and 40,500. Which is correct ?

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • amandahx2


    I've nearly set up three of my 5 campaigns so far and have found the populating the keywords is very time consuming. Is there a way for, say, Campaign #2 to use the same keywords as Campaign #1 without populating the new campaign manually? After all, the only reason I am setting up this second (and beyond) campaigns is because I want to compare the same keywords against additional competitors. Also, I was mid-way through setting up this third campaign when I ran out of keywords because I only get 300 per account? Is this correct? That is fine if I can replicate the same set of keywords per account, but it appears to have tallied each list of keywords, in each of my 3 campaigns, at 300 and I ran out before finishing this third campaign. I'll work with whatever the number is, but it seems strange that there isn't an option to have a single set of 300 keywords applied to each campaign that you set up. Am I misunderstanding something? Looking for help ...

    | amandahx2
    0
  • derrickkuhn


    If I'm optimizing for a specific keyword, is it accurate to assume that by ranking for that specific keyword that I will also be able to rank for similar or root keywords merely by ranking for the original keyword? For example, if I'm targeting 'free online bucket list' is it safe to assume that I will also be able to inadvertently rank for 'online bucket list' or 'free bucket list'? Can I assure clients of this? Or if I'm targeting 'Colorado grocery store' should I also naturally rank for 'grocery store Colorado' and not need to make both of these my targeted keywords?

    | derrickkuhn
    0
  • Mariannag7282


    How can I research why I'm getting 600 impressions and 35 clicks? My main targeted keyword is coming up in 3rd place, but the number of clicks has not gone up very much.

    | Mariannag7282
    0
  • Jon_KS


    Our company offers services for nonprofit organizations and we are finding that "non profit" and "nonprofit" are both used very frequently in search queries. I suspect Google will treat the two variations similarly but am looking for something more concrete than my anecdotal experience. How does Google treat compound words that are commonly searched for as multiple words? Any suggestions on resources or tests to find a concrete answer for "nonprofit"?

    | Jon_KS
    0
  • BobGW


    Hi, We have a site with lots of repeat customers. Now that Google Analytics has been gathering keywords for years, I want to do an overhaul on the site incorporating keywords we're not incorporating presently. But I'm afraid that repeat customers are going to search for their term that they find us with and we wouldn't be in the same spot so they'd go somewhere else. How do we refine the on-site SEO without jolting return customers? Thanks!

    | BobGW
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, I am helping out Bentinho Massaro, a spiritual figure from Holland, for free since he is such a good guy. I want to give him 3 to 4 keywords for his home page title tag. That's all he has time for. site: www.free-awareness.com The only things I can find so far that I think will fit are: Spiritual Awakening Bentinho Massaro The reason for #2 is that he is getting more and more famous. Any help you can come with to give him 4 options would be great. Thanks!

    | BobGW
    0
  • TCWorkouts


    I have researched exact keywords and noted a four word phrase which has fairly good numbers for exact keyword local searches a month with low competition. If I was to make it as my web address it would mean having www. (18 letters).co.uk Is it important to have the exact keyword in the URL for ranking purposes? Is an 18 letter web address either side of the www and .co.uk too long?

    | TCWorkouts
    0
  • sleepmaster


    I've played with the keyword tool a bit. Some keywords have 43% difficulty and some have 55%. What do these difficulty levels mean? I don't really know how to go about it.

    | sleepmaster
    0
  • CPP-360


    I'm looking for some direction to find better keywords for my sites. Any tips would be appreciated? This question could potentially be too broad.

    | CPP-360
    1
  • SBRMarketing


    Hi, we have recently been working on our site's keywords and we have seen an increase in traffic. As I monitor my keywords, I see that the Not Set keyword has increased a great deal and now become my top keyword. I researched some but all I got is that users are bookmarking my page or using other avenues to reach my website. Can anyone give me a more concrete answer? Is this bad? Or is this a direct result of an increase in traffic. Any words of wisdom will be much appreciated, As you were...

    | SBRMarketing
    0
  • bbelgard


    I know Google Insights gives this data, but the fact that it's relative to overall search requests make it very difficult to see anything other then obvious trends (Toys sell better in November, go figure?). Each query I've looked up[ is showing degradation over time, but I'm postulating that this has more to do with search volume increasing then with the volume of my queries decreasing.

    | bbelgard
    0
  • holdtheonion


    Hi: I have a dilemma and have not been able to find a good answer anywhere - and I have looked. 🙂 Gather up a bunch of keywords from Google's Keyword Tool that have tens of thousands of queries per month for local and global. When I plug the same keywords into Google's Traffic Estimator, even with a high bid (over $2) and a high daily budget ($50-100), I get all zeros returned from Traffic Estimator for columns Estimated Average CPC; Estimator Ad Position; Estimated Daily Budget, etc. Can someone please explain why this is the case? Is it because the keywords themselves, despite in some cases having hundreds of thousands of monthly searches, are low competition and therefore have no real value in Adwords? Thanks for your input and views, Phil

    | holdtheonion
    0
  • CURT-20817


    For example I want to see the top 20 sites in order of ranking for top keywords in my industry. Without having to know in advance the url's.

    | CURT-20817
    0
  • increation


    Hi, I have read lots of articles on long tail keyword research and all of it seems to apply to models and makes, i.e. "Canon power shot digital _camera _2MP" However, I work in the interior design industry, which doesn't have models and makes, if you see what I mean. Does anyone have any advice on how to do long tail keyword research for this sector or similar? Thanks for your help. Mik

    | increation
    0
  • leadsprofi


    Hi, i like to start the strong project like a jobs bord. My question is, i was thinking to buy a broad keyword domain or brand. From my experience, and seo strategy, i believe or ithink to start with brand name, unique brand name, and i can build more naturaly backlinks or all type of seos, maybe is better than a jobs domain. What do you suggest me?

    | leadsprofi
    0
  • LeeMiller


    is probably a "how long is a piece of string" question but wondered how to use the keyword difficulty tool, particularly in relation to the % and the wording moderate, what are these actually saying? Perhaps some of you could give details of how you use this tool and apply the % and term to real world situations, Thanks in advance, Lee

    | LeeMiller
    0
  • joehaddock


    I know that exact matches in the title tag are more powerful but how much will using an ellipse the title affect my results? For example I would like to use "What is… Actinide?" instead of "What is Actinide?"

    | joehaddock
    0
  • ChrisMciIlroy


    I've came across a suggested list of words that google will ignore in your content, if this is correct and one of our main keywords is one of those words, will it lose effectiveness? We are trying to get #1 SERP for "Self Tan" and it seems "Self" is one of the words ignored - so should we just be focusing on Tan? Any tips / advice would be great!

    | ChrisMciIlroy
    0
  • seoug_2005


    I had read a post in SEOmoz about keywords. According to it, The best keywords are 1. High Volume (many searches/month) 2. Low Competition 3. High Value (large % of visitors convert) My question is how can i find about 2nd and 3rd point. High search volume is shown in many Tools including Google adwords, but how can we be sure to find keywords that are low in competition and at the same time high value.

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • jest


    Isn't this scraping Google results on a massive scale? Is this legal at all?

    | jest
    1
  • AdoptionHelp


    I'm currently using the PRO campaigns to track my main keywords. However, I'm trying to do some research on KW opportunities, and having no luck finding a way to conveniently check rankings for new keywords. What tool do you use to get ranking results for large keyword lists?

    | AdoptionHelp
    0
  • MackenzieFogelson


    We've been using Wordtracker for years to find viable long tail keyword options. Lately, we've begun to doubt the true usefulness of this tool.  We have implemented good optimization efforts using relevant keywords that Wordtracker suggests as reasonably well-searched with relatively low competition. Even when we rank well for these words, we get no traffic for them. Subsequent checking of these words in Google AdWords reveal that Google has found no searches for these words at all. Suspicious, we've begun cross-checking our keywords in AdWords and the Moz Keyword Difficulty tool. But now I keep getting contradictory reports. For example, a keyword I recently checked reported thus: In Wordtracker: high competition and low search In AdWords: high competition and decent search In Moz: only moderately competitive Who do I believe? How do other people weight the opinions of the various keyword research tools?

    | MackenzieFogelson
    0
  • AHH888


    Does anyone know of any google products research tools? I am trying to find what attributes and classifications my competitors are using? Much help appreciated. Thanks!

    | AHH888
    0
  • tennisexpress


    We are thinking about using our meta keywords field to feed to shopping networks like The Find, Shopzilla, Buy.com, etc. These networks want you to provide them with as many keywords as possible to show up in their internal search results. If we feed them our meta keywords field we could have 20 to 25 keywords for each product (tennis equipment). Would this be a bad or good thing for SEO?

    | tennisexpress
    0
  • Motivators


    Is it better to optimize based on search volume or click through rate? For example: If a keyword has a CTR of 19% and only 3,000 monthly searches, while another keyword that is relevant to that page has a CTR of 0.7% and 20,000 monthly searches, which keyword should that page be optimized for for better natural results and the bottom line?

    | Motivators
    0
  • wedmonds


    Hi All, Question for you Google Analytics pros. In the keywords section of my account I see the various words that have been used to find my site.  The top entry shows a big long line of text from my site and I wondered why this appears on the keywords. e.g  Lets say I had "Today I went to the shops and bought a football" In the keywords I would normally expect to see 'football', 'shops' etc but instead I am actually seeing things like " went to the shops and bought a football". What causing this? Thanks all

    | wedmonds
    0
  • danielfromnz


    Hey there, I'm trying to work out what my next big course to run will be. I want to know if my technique is a good gauge of popularity. I'm using Google's keyword tool specifically for New Zealand. I'm typing in a course topic e.g Photoshop Courses and looking at the exact match results to see if there might be a market for that course. Broad match seems to offer up a lot more numbers but seem a bit vague. Am i right to think 'After Effects Training' wouldn't be a popular course as it returns a (<10) local monthly result while 'Photoshop Courses' might be ok as it has a (46)? **I'd appreciate any insight.  ** Dan
    - the Adobe Trainer

    | danielfromnz
    0
  • KevinBloom


    I use the Keyword Difficulty Tool daily. Because of the troubles with Google's API I can no longer see the search volumes. I still want to use the tool for difficulty numbers because I think this is a much better number than the Google Adwords Competitive bar. If I use the Adwords keyword tool for volume numbers, will that be sufficient?  Is this the same as what Moz usually provides? If no, where is the best place to gather volume numbers? Thanks!

    | KevinBloom
    0
  • languedoc


    Hello, I am looking into Meta keywords in the attempt to understand their importance. I have been reading about this in several blogs and get the feeling that the general view is that they are no longer very valuable. Some say it is because Google and Bing no longer use them, that in terms of SEO they carry little importance and that they are a great indicator to your competitors about which keywords you believe are important... My question is this: Without Meta keywords, how do you deal with misspelt search keywords on your website? For example, if you were looking for a product called 'El Mundo en Espa_ñ_ol' but spelt it using the normal 'n' instead of the Spanish 'ñ', and the keyword 'Espanol' was not included in the Meta keywords, would you still find the product? English speaking people commonly search without the ñ because this is more convenient to them. So how can I make sure that the page is optimised for these type of common misspellings? Thanks!!!

    | languedoc
    0
  • Adsau


    Hi I would like to rank a list of keywords by searches per month in google.com.au, How could I do this?

    | Adsau
    0
  • jest


    Do you get an error in the search numbers when using the keyword difficulty tool?

    | jest
    0
  • DerekP


    Hey SeoMozzers, Do you guys use broad match or exact match to gauge whether or not there's enough volume to be worth your time? Take the freelancing niche for example. These are the results for broad match: <a class="aw-ti-resultsPanel-details">how to be a freelance writer [2,740,000]</a> how to freelance [165,000] In exact match however: <a class="aw-ti-resultsPanel-details">how to become a freelance writer [1,000]</a> how to freelance [480] In this niche in particular, there's not really any keyword that gets more than 20,000 exact match searches a month. However, the broad level keywords have more than 2 million searches. Here's my thinking: Instead of targeting highly specific terms to optimize for, I'm just going to optimize for broad terms and aim to capture the long tail. It seems there's a lot of people searching for things, but they're all spread out across different keywords. So my instinct is to go with the broad match results, assume there's enough traffic to support a profitable website and ignore the low exact match results. Your thoughts ... ?

    | DerekP
    0
  • MichaelWeisbaum


    Currently, I list every root word (one word) I can think of for the client.  Then start a 2 word keyword section, making every possible connection with my root words.  Then move to 3 word, 4 word, and so on.  I do this all in a word document and by hand.  Does anybody have ANYTHING (tool/strategy) that does something similar?  I'm looking for anything that can expedite this process.  My manual method makes me feel like I'm always forgetting certain combinations of words.

    | MichaelWeisbaum
    0
  • BigBlaze205


    I had most of my keywords in top 50 until last week. Important Keywords like ''furnace filter'' and ''furnace filters'' had raking of 5 and 6 in first page of Google.ca I did not do modification on site, How can this happen? Thank you, Jean Nichols Furnace Filters Canada

    | BigBlaze205
    0
  • monotero


    hi i am in Argentina, search customize to Argentina in google,yahoo and bing. all my keyword in seomoz go down 10 places. when i click in a keyword , i see that is searching in .com (all the world) . when i do a local search i see correct rankings? thanks for reply Gabo

    | monotero
    0
  • BigBlaze205


    I need to optimize Furnace Filter & Furnace Filters. Do I create one page for each keyword or just one page for furnace filter for example? Where can I read about keyword variation? Thank you, Jean Nichols http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/

    | BigBlaze205
    0
  • ATCnik


    Does description, alt and keywords tags are influence on density of keyword for google?

    | ATCnik
    0
  • peterds


    When keyword rich domain are occupying high serp's (exact match domain choices are already gone, ie. www.widgit1widgit2.com), what would be the next best choice for SEO www.widgit1-widgit2.com or www.mywidgit1widgit2.com Peter

    | peterds
    0
  • DeptAgency


    As I do a lot of keyword research for my clients, I've found the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool a great way to dig deeper in the competitive data for important keywords, whenever I am at the point of choosing between a smaller number of keywords. However, in some cases I would rather have a quick idea of how competitive a large list of keywords is (for example 1000+). As the Keyword Difficulty tool has a limit of 5 per run and 300 per day, I am looking for a technique or tool to run a list of keywords and get an idea of competitiveness for each keyword. Thanks for any suggestions!

    | DeptAgency
    0
  • vibelingo


    I recently checked rank-tracking of a client's search-phrases. In Google UK variations of 2 almost identical search phrases dropped 30 places for one of these and jumped 30 places for the other. The only difference between the 2 phrases being the site's location (city) was placed first in phrase A and last in Phrase B. There were no technical or content changes on-site- How can this be?

    | vibelingo
    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


Browse Questions

Explore more categories

  • Moz Tools

    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

  • SEO Tactics

    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

  • Community

    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

  • Support

    Connect on product support and feature requests.

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