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Category: Keyword Research

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

  • ankurv


    Is it gone forever! Please dont let it be!

    | ankurv
    0
  • Benj25


    Why would my website appear, for example, second for a keyword search on Google.co.uk but on a search through Google.com or Google.com.au (Australia) not appear in the Top 50? Excuse the simplicity of the question!

    | Benj25
    0
  • Promoteam


    Howdy, I was looking at the maximum lenght of url for ntfs and they told me it was 255 character for url and/or folder ect. Does that mean that i could use the full lenght of 255 filled whit keyword for the url on my site ? Thx.

    | Promoteam
    0
  • Promoteam


    Hi all ! I have a quick question. On one of the site im working, my principal keyword im working whit have a accent such as é or è or ĉ. How does google seen it ? When im trying to see a page in cached version to see what google is suppose to see, i often see my keyword whit @ or other weird sign in it. Does it affect my keyword ranking ? Can i lose autority ? Should i hide some "no accent keyword" somewhere on the page ? Cause some of them make no sense whitout it. Thanks !

    | Promoteam
    0
  • Gmorgan


    I'm finding major discrepancies between SEOMOZ's google api exact match search volumes and Google's own keyword tool, why? For example, 'bridge loans' gets 1300 searchs according to Google's keyword tool, but SEOMOZ says it only gets 210 (both on exact match). So which one do I believe? I know one is the average over 12 months and the other is for last month alone but still that's a huge difference.

    | Gmorgan
    0
  • CWseo


    Hi, I'm currently working on improving rankings for a web design company.  I think i'm possibly getting a bit hung up on this but I'm a bit stuck!  The company has offices in 2 locations in the UK - in both Leicester and London.  Do I need to include the 2 different locations in my keywords to improve ranking for both locations, say someone searching in Leicester searching for say 'web design Leicester'?  ie one of my page titles (with keywords) is currently: Web design agency, Graphic design, Branding, Leicester & London Am I going about this in the right way? Hope this makes sense!

    | CWseo
    0
  • bvrob


    One of my client's sites is experiencing a major decrease in search traffic (by 50%) but the main terms she usually gets traffic for, she's ranking the same or even better over the period of time that the traffic has decreased. What could cause this?

    | bvrob
    0
  • GPN


    I am accessing these tools from the "Rankings Report" page and looking at competitors pages. I click on the dropdown next to the keyword and select either "extract terms" or "explore links". In both cases I get a message that says SEOmoz has no data for the page in question. This happens consistently for many keywords and pages. What gives?

    | GPN
    0
  • Seaward-Group


    My homepage explains the different electrical equipment our company sells, our main product category page also does the same but in more detail. I'm stuck where I feel the homepage and product category page need to be optimised for the same keyword except the homepage needs to be optimised for our company name too. Was anyone else in the same situation as me and how did you choose the right keyword between two pages that have the same message?

    | Seaward-Group
    0
  • dashesndots


    Hi, Would really appreciate some input on this. My client www.dgatours.com is aiming primarily at United States in terms of audience as this is where predominately the clients come from. I set the geographic target as this is a .com site to United States in google webmaster tools, is that the right thing to do or should I have left it unassigned? I am finding it hard to see the results that I get from SEOMOZ as I am in the UK and am wondering if by setting the geographic target to the United States I am narrowing the potential search results from google. thanks very much Tracy

    | dashesndots
    0
  • FastLearner


    I was doing some keyword research about 45 days ago and stumbled across two keywords that I was ranking in the mid hundreds and decided I wanted to see if I could rank them. I went in and changed my title to my blog, and the description.  Then about a week later I changed my mind and wanted to go for two other keywords so I changed it again. Then within a day or two, my site completely fell off the serps for those two key words that I changed the title to optimize for. None of my other rankings were effected for any of the other keywords, in fact most of my keywords have risen because of recent backlinking. I thought it was just a temporary google bounce because I was playing with my title of my blog or something, but after almost two months I am still nowhere to be found for words that I should easily at least be in the top 1000, especially because I was at about 150 by accident. Anyone have any ideas on what might have happened? Thanks.

    | FastLearner
    0
  • eunaneunan


    So a keyword we are targeting  "painted bedroom furniture"  google keyword tool says gets 480 exact local searches (and 880 broad),  and in the same local google we have ranked 1st for months (and currently we are 2nd and 3rd too), but looking at the google analytics that landing page has only gotten 78 unique page views from searches and only 21 from "painted bedroom furniture" . (the 2nd link gets 12 page views and the 3rd gets none, from that keyword) Now for me that does not make sense! For other keyword which we rank No.1 the keyword data and analytics generally match/make sense.   Is there something I'm missing?

    | eunaneunan
    0
  • ref.price


    Hello SEOs, I work for an e-commerce site and we often open new categories Babycare, Arts & Crafts, DIY... Does anyone have any killer methods to find the right key words for sub categories, items,... Handy tools? Tips?  Google doc spread sheet cheat? Cheers!!! crossword.gif

    | ref.price
    0
  • PMC-312087


    I had a friend of mine ask me this question and I didn't really know how to go about answering. He wants to know if, for example, www.cardealer.net is better than www.car-dealer.com or vice-versa? Both seem to be interchangeable to me. I hate websites with dashes in them but obviously it is necessary in some cases... ".net" is not my favorite either. What would you recommend?

    | PMC-312087
    0
  • adriandg


    how heavily do the list of keywords in google's webmaster tools reflect your ranking for those keywords?  For example see this screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39497/Screen shot 2011-06-04 at 7.22.31 PM.png we are a self storage company, and our first two keywords in google's webmaster tools are storage and self.  the problem is nobody searches for self storage (from my keyword research). most people search for "storage +cityname" like "storage toronto" for example. so i guess my question would be this: would it be effective to change all the instances of "Self" on our website to "Toronto" or other city names to try to push the city names higher in google's webmaster tools keywords rank?

    | adriandg
    0
  • TeemuKinnunen


    Hi there! My client has a webpage http://www.finlotto.fi. It's a lottery in the Internet. We are trying to dominate keyword "lotto". It's a high volume keyword that has over 135 000 local searches (exact) per month. However, it seems that there aren't much competition out there. We have only one competitor - Veikkaus.fi The issue: We usually have first page ranking only for 2 days max, then we got dropped to third page. Two days later we have first page ranking again. Then we got dropped again to third page. This happens all the time. the odd thing: when we are in the first page, there are a date in the beginning of the META description. When we got dropped to third page, the date disappears. I know this has something to do with crawling. Can you give me some answers considering this issue? I'd be VERY VERY grateful 🙂 BR, Teemu Kinnunen

    | TeemuKinnunen
    0
  • Seaward-Group


    I've been doing various searches today and I keep hitting this error: We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly. I've filed a support request but I'm wondering if its just me?

    | Seaward-Group
    0
  • redvalecomms


    New to this so bear with, I am a TV aerial, satellite, CCTV, Door entry, Access Control, Telephone repair engineer. I have one seperate page for each of the installations I carry out as well as the basic home, about, areas, faqs and so on. My question is do i have one key phrase for each of the services  i cover or do i just relate all the keywords from that service into the keywords tag ie, META name=keywords content="Digial aerials Stockport,digital aerials Manchester,aerials Stockport,aerials Manchester,aerial repairs Stockport,aerial repairs Manchester,digital,aerial,tv,tv aerials Manchester,tv aerials Stockport,arials,arial,aerial installer,aerial installations,aeril installation,Stockport,Manchester ,"> That is what i have fro Tv aerial installation, Should i make landing pages for each phrase for each service or stick to one page? www.redvalecommunications.co.uk is the site if you want to take a look thanks in advance

    | redvalecomms
    0
  • MarkBolin


    Is this ok to do?. It will be alot of keywords. we are talking about 20 different communities surrounding Dayton, Oh.

    | MarkBolin
    0
  • sarenausa


    I want organic keywords. I'm going to create a blog. What is better: to use WordPress on subdomain or to write blog myself using CodeIgniter (considering that my website is already on CodeIgniter)

    | sarenausa
    0
  • peterds


    What SEOMOZ tool or other resource should I use to find a list of Google's most popular keyword searches. The "Keyword Difficulty" tool will allow me to check out information about a particular Keyword. For example if I want to check out the top 1000 most popular Keyword Searches in the .co.uk area, irregardless of industry. Thanks Peter

    | peterds
    0
  • regalatufoto


    Hello, My site is about personalized cards, and I have optimized (rank A) each sample page to the main topic of the card (eg: sapo pepe). So when people search for that keyword (sapo pepe), my page ranks high. Now, if instead of checking the optimization for "sapo pepe" I check for "cards sapo pepe" I get an F, because the keyword is not there. Thing is that people search for different tier 2 keywords, like "cards, models, examples, etc" and I cannot put that many keywords in the page... My question is: does Search Engines rank you high if you optimize your page  for a subset of the keywords people search for? I understand that if someone optimizes for "cards sapo pepe" they would get higher than my site. Hope I was clear, any comment is appreciated! Thanks, MAriano

    | regalatufoto
    0
  • dbuckles


    .

    | dbuckles
    0
  • peterds


    For seo purposes Looking to register a new double (keyword based) domain were popular domains are not available. Keyword difficulty rated for exact keyword is 49% For example, www.(name1)(name2).com (is not available) www.(name1)-(name2).com (is not available) (single space between keywords) What is the next best alternative? www.(name1)--(name2).com (Double space between keywords) www.(name2)(name1).com (reverse keywords with no spaces) www.(name1)s(name2)s.com (adding the letter s to the end of both keywords) or is there a better alternative)

    | peterds
    0
  • ACann


    Our niche has one keyword phrase that is much, much more active than any other comparable phrase. Let's call that phrase "math problems". Within this phrase, the "math" is absolutely the most important keyword, as it is also used in every spin-off search phrase, like "math answers", "math practice", etc. We've had our domain since 1996, and is currently the company name - "Rocketproblems.com". Over the last year (2010-2011) our SERPs have steadily dropped to the point where we're not getting a sustainable level of business from organic search, whereas in 2009 we were doing fantastic. However, we've also had "Rocketmathproblems.com" since about 2000, just gathering dust. What I've noticed from the top search results is that nearly every domain has either "math" or "math problems" in its URL. Do you think it's worth it to switch to the keyword-rich URL? It is a bit more verbose, and the "Rocketmathproblems.com" v.s. "Rocketproblems.com" example perfectly captures the different feeling. My inclination is that SEO is only becoming more competitive, and if we aren't getting worthwhile business from organic search at the moment then we should bite the bullet and make the switch for the future, along with ramping up our content generation. However, I also noticed that in late 2009 a previous webmaster switched to "Rogermath.com" but switched back within a month when our SERP for the key phrase was a page lower - I gleaned this from a Moz Juicy Keywords Report :). Thoughts?

    | ACann
    0
  • BlandyDoes


    Hello! This is my first question so I hope it will be a good one and everyone finds it useful; I have found many conflicting views and need some clarification. Question: When it comes to optimising for specific keywords, which is best; plurals or singular? Example: Should I optimise for 'conveyor' with medium competition and a larger local [exact] traffic volume, or go for 'conveyors' with a higher competition and a slightly smaller local [exact] volume of traffic? Obviously this example is a bit of no brainer as I would tend to sway towards the lower competition with a good volume of traffic to be more competitive, but when the terms are so closely linked, would it be wise to cover both grounds now and go for 'conveyors'? What is general consensus out there? Thanks in advance! Richard

    | BlandyDoes
    0
  • omarfk


    i need to keep a record for all keywords history , is there any way that we can track keywords history so we can compare each week with the previous weeks ?

    | omarfk
    0
  • PMC-312087


    I am trying to improve the SEO for my client's website - http://www.petmedicalcenter.com. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for improving my h1, h2, etc., tags and keyword usage on the home page? The top 5 search terms are: vet las vegas (most searched) las vegas vets vets las vegas las vegas vet pet hospital las vegas vets in las vegas Any suggestions you have is appreciated. Thanks! -Brant

    | PMC-312087
    0
  • EvolveDigitalLabs


    I am looking to refine my Keyword research process. Currently I use 4 keyword tools to get volume, competition and of course other ideas. From there I try to distill it down to categories and then order on ability to drive traffic and convert. Anyone have something they can share maybe from the excel side, maybe from the tool side... something to help me make this easy and great.

    | EvolveDigitalLabs
    1
  • kiswebsltd


    We have recently been doing a bit of Keyword research using Googles Adwords Keyword tool. This highlighted many variations of a similar search phrase and indicated all had the same number of searches per month. Sush as; "web design in glasgow"
    "website designers glasgow"
    "website designer glasgow"
    "glasgow web designers" If someone searches on Google for "web design in glasgow" will google rank pages optimised for "website designer glasgow" ? Thank you. Alan

    | kiswebsltd
    0
  • Tinderbox


    I have website which is being listed for a keyword which is not in the site. It seems that google is using a Thesaurus to find words with similar meaning. Is this right? How could this be used for SEO purposes?

    | Tinderbox
    0
  • GrouchyKids


    I want to check which words Google is aware of, I remember Danny Dover talking about "SeoMoz.org" and theorising that Google couldn't understand that SEO was in the URL because it didn't understand that "Moz" was a word and therefore couldn't seperate the 2 words "SEO and "Moz" out. Any ideas, I thought about using Google Instant but as it comes up with "seomoz" when i type in "seom" so am assuming that this detail is taken from a diffrent source. Justin

    | GrouchyKids
    0
  • TRICORSystems


    Question about a sites most important keyword term. So lets say you have a website and your most important keyword term is "Blue Widgets", you also have a page named "blue-widgets.htm". What do we do with our index page in this instance? Especially for the title  tag? Should I put "Blue Widgets" in the title tags of both pages? I'm guessing this would be a duplicate meta tag error? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
    Thanks
    -Brandon

    | TRICORSystems
    0
  • chucky_boy


    Hey everyone, I have been working in business dev for just over 3 years in seo/sem. Needless to say I was hooked right away and I think I am finally ready to start something on my own. I have started some work for a client who does not  want to spend lot of money(what else is new). They manufacture watches and handbags and have over 2 hundred retailers across Canada. They currently have no online presence with with the site they have now.On top of that they have decided they want to start selling their products online. Also they want to target retailers as well as the general public. So I started thinking how can I use  keyword phrase that would attract both retailers and end users I thought a good keyword phrase "buy stylish cheap watches and handbags online in Canada" that has a lot of opportunity because it has several keywords in the phrase, and can be broken down to target several 3 word key phrases. I have checked out Google's Keyword Suggest as well as WordTracker, and found that the phrase as a whole has very little traffic value.However there is tons of traffic when broken up.An example would be. Buy stylish watches online, buy affordable watches online and so on and so on. How do I know If I have chosen the right keywords if my client doesn't have the funds to test them all using PPC? This is my first client and I really don't want to mess this up.They are really good people and I would like to do right by them. Can anyone give me some advice. Great know my keyboard wont let me put in a question mark lol, thankfully its the weekend.

    | chucky_boy
    0
  • tennisround


    What's up guys! We run a site for tennis players and courts in the whole country - http://www.tennisround.com/. People use the site to find a tennis partner at their skill level and send each other invites to set up matches, it's also used to find local tennis courts. The question is - Which keyword(s) should we optimize the site for and how? Cheers, Alex 7h1HKYL_jJ0 sYaQH 7h1HKYL_jJ0 sYaQH 7h1HKYL_jJ0

    | tennisround
    0
  • Giggy


    Please let me know if I have this all wrong ... 500 people search for "ham" My client is #1 SERP w/clean SEO I have provided. out of the 500, half click on the SERP the rest got to ads, or to the bathroom, etc. 250 click to website, half go through.... the rest bail (50% bounce, I know this is bad, but just for demo purposes) Leaving 125 as potential Ham buyers. I have a feeling this final # should be much smaller...thoughts, insights? Thanks Mozzers!

    | Giggy
    0
  • steven88


    This has been bugging me for awhile. I am trying to build up some great evergreen/cornerstone content for my site. It's basic stuff that just needs to be there. This problem is affecting me already, and I fear that when I get the main content done I will run into the problem when I start blogging for fresh content. The best way to explain this, is to use an example. Imagine a Jewelry store in a major metro. They are already ranking for a few "city + keyword" combos but are looking to expand their keyword reach and get some better rankings. They might have a page on diamonds, and target "city + diamonds." Then, lets say they are writing about Jewelry and you target a page on "city + jewelry" and on this page, it can be hard to write normal sounding content without saying diamond. AKA "We make shopping for "city + jewelry" super easy. You select a diamond, select your "setting, city + jewelry, or something"" What I would like to know, is if I should go crazy with the targeting and just write about "city + jewelry" on one page, for instance, and make sure not to just mention "diamond" and then make a sub-page or something to target "city + diamond + jewelry" Does any of that make sense? Edit for clarity - targeted keyword phrases bolded - I left my ramble above for historical and comedic purposes. It is hard to talk about jewelry without including some really (basic terms/keywords) that I am targeting on other pages. Is this going to be a problem? I might have a page on engagement rings, and another on diamonds probably targeted to the local area. Later, I might decide to write a blog titled "10 Reasons you need to buy an Engagement Ring" Should I alter that blog to be called "10 Reasons you need to buy a Diamond Engagement Ring" and try not to mention just the word diamond(s) or engagement ring(s) so that I don't confuse the almighty Google? Please advise

    | steven88
    0
  • webdecorators


    I utilize a variety of keyword tools when I'm doing research, Google keyword tools, word tracker, keyword spy, etc but as soon as I throw in a city or state, the numbers seem to drop drastically or disappear. I understand that naturally these numbers will decrease because it will be a less popular term, but I feel like I have a great phrase and i don't understand why there isn't ANY local data for it. I was wondering what process you go through to specifically identify local terms.

    | webdecorators
    1
  • lhutt


    Can anyone (not Google affliated) explain to me where Google's data really comes from in their Keyword Tool? Is it at all based on organic search? Or only on Google Ads related data? I know there was some controversy back in June '10 and the Google remedied the return of suggested keywords but I can't seem to get a clear answer (other than from the Google blog itself) whether the search volumes returned are truly indicative of organic search. Am I relying on the wrong tool? Do those more savvy than I only rely on the keyword tool for PPC research. Please help! I'm obsessing over my numbers here. 🙂

    | lhutt
    0
  • EricVallee34


    I'm doing keyword research and one of the terms I have found that work for my website are "exercise and vitamins".  One of my colleagues told me that Google views searches that contain the word "and" as an "or" statement (i.e., the searcher is looking for either "excercise" or "vitamins").  My understanding of the word "and" is that it is a stop word, which is ignored by Google. Which is correct?

    | EricVallee34
    0
  • KevinBloom


    My client is a kitchen remodeling company in Sterling, Virginia and is trying to rank well in local results.  I am struggling with keyword selection mostly because I am still learning about local SEO. The city the company is located is Sterling, however their business comes from several other close by cities like Reston, Herndon, and Fairfax (Nobody lives in Sterling so they don't care too much about owning that in search engines). Is the right strategy: 1. Choosing one city and focusing on that (kitchen remodeling in reston, VA) 2. Optimizing for multiple cities (kitchen remodeling, reston, herndon, fairfax...) 3. Optimizing for an entire region (kitchen remodeling, northern virginia) I know it's hard to answer this with little information but gut reactions would be appreciated. I am a new SEOmoz member so excuse me if this question is too specific for this forum.  I'm still getting a feel for the community. Thanks! Sean

    | KevinBloom
    0
  • simonsw


    I have been analysing some specific seasonal keywords in terms of search volume within the Google keyword tool. When I download the google keyword volume for each term, this is displayed as a monthly average. I am wanting to get search volume over previous months which I am sure the Google keyword tool used to offer Does anyone have a solution to this? Thanks Simon

    | simonsw
    0
  • danfk


    Hi there, I wonder if you can help. Google's keyword tool lists each of these keywords separately with its own Local Monthly Volume count: flats to rent in London flats to rent London flats for rent in London flats for rent London flat to rent in London flat to rent London flat for rent in London flat for rent London I'd rather not create 8 separate pages for this, which I think will be poor for the user and limit the range of keywords i can target. So my main question is: what should I do? a) How important is 'in'? Will a page written for 'flats to rent in London' do well against the 'flats to rent London'? b) The same for plurals: if I'm writing 'flats to rent' will it rank against 'flat to rent'? c) The same for 'to' and 'for': If i'm writing 'flats to rent in London' will it rank against 'flats for rent in London?' Thanks in advance dan

    | danfk
    0
  • EricVallee34


    I'm doing keyword research in the Google Keyword Tool and was looking and spending a lot of time looking at keyword competition and local searches. I'm trying to determine what is a good rule of thumb for what level of competition and local searches people have used when selecting the keywords they will optimize for.  I've currently been trying to find ones that have less than 50% (moderate) competition and less than 1,000 monthly searches. Also, which do you put more weight on the competition or the number of searches.

    | EricVallee34
    1
  • EricVallee34


    I'm working with a client who has a website, but doesn't really have a clearly defined idea of who their key audience is nor do they know what keyword phrases they would like to rank for. I know that I can generate a starting list by reviewing their site, but I want to set some parameters on it so I can provide an accurate estimate. I'm looking for suggestions on how to do this.

    | EricVallee34
    0
  • EricVallee34


    I've been doing some research on SEOmoz and have seen some posts relating to invisible long tail keywords.  I have a couple of questions relating to this: Am I correct to understand that an invisible long tail keyword won't show any search in a tool like the Google Keyword Tool?  If not, how do you define it? If an invisible long tail keyword has almost no search (or search that can be proven by an SEO researcher), how can you be confident that it will produce results?

    | EricVallee34
    1
  • Champions


    For example, we have optimized all of a clients interior pages to the point where it is competing with some of their competitors main pages.  Unfortunately, they do not show up on most of the Google Places keywords.  Their competition, who are lower than them organically, automatically show up in Google Places while they do not show up at all.  Organically they are 2nd or 3rd in most of their keywords, but no one near the top in Google Places. Thank you!

    | Champions
    0
  • mreisbeck


    Hello, I have been researching search volumes for awhlie now for key terms related to my industry, as well as working towards better rankings for those terms that have higher search volumes using on-page optimization, external link anchor texts, etc. The only tool I use for this research is the Google keyword tool. Today when I was looking at the keyword difficulty for a particular term (first time I
    had used this tool in my SEOMOZ account), I saw how the search volumes are listed for both broad and exact match from Google's API.  As I said I've based my strategies around results from Google's keyword tool, but now I see that, for a particular term that I have been focused on, there are 15,000 searches for "broad" match and 91 for "exact" match.  I just checked the keyword tool at Google and there is apparently no way to set a keyword up to search for its "exact" match search statistics.  Is this only available using their API? I'm on the floor here.  Does this mean I've been optimizing for a term that has less than
    a hundred searches a month as opposed to 15,000?  If so, can anyone here reccommend any search volume tool that can deliver a higher degree of accuracy so I can make better
    judgements regarding how I will spend my time and effort regarding SEO (and in fact,
    to some degree, my budget for PPC)? Any help provided will be much appreciated. Mike

    | mreisbeck
    0
  • RogersSEO


    Hi, Is using keywords in different orders considered keyword cannibalization? for example, if I my client has a catering business based in mississauga, Ontario, should I create separate 2nd tier pages on the following keywords? 1. mississauga catering 2. catering mississauga 3.  catering in mississauga Is that keyword cannibalization? The reason I ask is because it's often hard to find a good # of diverse keywords for local businesses that are also used more than a few times each month in the search engines. thanks, Martin

    | RogersSEO
    0
  • webdecorators


    I have a list of keywords in a campaign that I need to update. I use the keyword report card to review those keyword performance by page. I dont currently see a way to update those keywords, I only see the option to add or delete. I don't want to delete and re-enter because then I will lose that "mapping". Is there a way to simply update a keyword?

    | webdecorators
    0

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