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Category: Keyword Research

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

  • Omniafunction


    Trying to decide on a keyword phrase for my next post. One of the two phrases I'm deciding between has 100x more traffic but the priority is wayyy higher and the competition is just one point higher (54 vs 53). I'm hesitant to write on a post that gets 11k-30k monthly volume however b/c it just seems like too much traffic for a small blog with a domain authority of only 18 to compete with. But if the competition is nearly the same and the priority is higher, should I go for it anyway? I generally go for things with lower traffic thinking I will be able to better compete. Thanks!

    | Omniafunction
    1
  • Noblemoz


    When I use the Google search console to discover keyword phrases being used to drive visitors to my site I see some keywords that have the city name repeated (ex: web design sarasota sarasota, fl). Why does this happen?

    | Noblemoz
    1
  • ThereNYC


    My web site used https://www.domain.com for the past 18 months. We finally got to #3 position for our top keyword. We changed web servers and our wordpress admin section somehow got changed to https://domain.com. As you can imaging I'm not too happy. We do have 301 redirects installed. Yesterday I noticed that our site was not ranking anymore. In fact, all our pages and our site URLs at https://www.domain.com have been de-indexed. I assume because that no longer exists. Using site: all the web pages under https://domain.com (which were identical to the old www) are now listed. All of them. However, none are showing in searches unless we search for the business name. They are not appearing under keyword searches. I would assume that the 301s (which are installed property) would make the site keep it's rank, as the pages are all identical. Will we ever get our rank back? Should we switch back to www? Or do the 301s just take time to hit? How long if that's the case?

    | ThereNYC
    0
  • BlakeSmith3


    Good morning! I have a quick question about international keyword research. So, I created a keyword list full of terms that we want to analyze in Latin America. My question is around search results. For example, if the keyword I am analyzing in English is "apples" and I choose the region as Mexico, should I submit the keyword to be analyzed as "apples" or the Spanish translation "manzanas"? I am confused as to whether the results account for the translation of someone searching "manzanas" in Mexico to the English term "apples" and how that whole process works. Let me know if I need to elaborate because I understand that the whole question is super confusing haha. Thanks for any help you can give! 🙂

    | BlakeSmith3
    1
  • triknew12


    I have a new affiliate website which doesn't have good da pa. which keyword difficulty score did I take?

    | triknew12
    0
  • smithcorona


    Hello all.  For quite some time, both Moz & Ahrefs have indicated to me that I am in first position for several keywords.  However, when I go into my Google Webmaster Tools, it says that I am in 7th or 8th position. Any idea why there is such a discrepancy?

    | smithcorona
    0
  • Alaeddin


    MOZ has some really powerful tools available to us, but I was wondering if there are any tools for conducting keyword research for YouTube? Thanks!

    | Alaeddin
    1
  • Brandon.H


    Hi everyone! While performing keyword research using both Google's old and new Keyword Planner, I've noticed a disparity between the two tools. In many cases, the old tool gives a much larger monthly search volume than the new tool. There are a few cases where both tools provide the same monthly search volume for a term, but those are few and far between. Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks in advance!

    | Brandon.H
    0
  • yaelslater


    Hi Mozers, We're trying to come up with an SEO friendly URL. Does it make sense to re-order primary-secondary-tumor to secondary-primary-tumor because "primary tumor" has high volumes and thus those two words should be adjacent? Any advice is appreciated! Yael

    | yaelslater
    0
  • ayadujaili


    i was checking keyword difficulty on moz for: cheap car hire london - and as per moz it's 37 | when i checked SEM rush i can see difficulty is 77% why is that different? I want to know which is more accurate to follow

    | ayadujaili
    0
  • harshal.khatavkar


    While doing keyword research I found out that there are 2 keywords with same search count and difficulty level.
    Outsource Engineering Design India
    Offshore Engineering Design India My question is, should I create 2 separate pages for these keywords with the addition of their extended related keywords or just keep one long page with both these keywords targeted? Technically, Outsource and Offshore have separate meanings but on SERP it seems like both are searched for the same purpose. Can you please share your views on this? Thanks

    | harshal.khatavkar
    0
  • EdTechTeam


    The page supports information for our partners in the UK.... but from an SEO perspective which will Google understand better in the URL... UK or United Kingdom?

    | EdTechTeam
    0
  • scottgray0620


    Hey Everyone, I'm curious if anyone can provide some insight as to what my keywords should be for my website. Just as a quick heads up, my company, Back In Motion Sport & Spine Physical Therapy, is a physical therapy clinic that specializes in orthopedic, sport, and spine injuries. You can find my site here: www.backinmotionsspt.com That said, I understand about doing key word research and integrating that on the site. However, since I am a smaller practice should the end of the my key word entail my city of Fort Myers, FL. For instance, should my key words be the following: Orthopedic physical therapy Fort Myers, FL Sport Rehabilitation Fort Myers, FL Back Pain Relief Fort Myers, FL Or.... Should they just be: Orthopedic physical therapy Sport rehabilitaiton Back pain relief I look forward to hearing any and all feedback.

    | scottgray0620
    0
  • CKinsley


    I have recently joined an accounting firm and am in charge of SEO as we revamp the website. As this is the first time I've done SEO for this type of site, my question is: Should the keywords I choose include our Brand (name of the company) in the keyword. For example, I'm not trying to rank #1 for "Careers" but I do want to rank #1 for " <ourbrand>Careers". So, should I include the brand when doing my research, making lists, etc.?</ourbrand> If the question doesn't make sense, please ask for clarification.

    | CKinsley
    0
  • Joseph-Green-SEO


    **How do wedding venue owners Google for a "restroom trailer rental" different than someone who is planning out their own event? I want to give venues an exclusive offer. Any tips on how they search for it different than regular users? **

    | Joseph-Green-SEO
    0
  • seoanalytics


    I believe the surrounding words to a "keyword" are called co-occurences and I was wondering if there a a software that can tell me which word(s) go around a specific word (before or after). Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    0
  • seoanalytics


    Hello, When writing my content do my related keyword need to be noun subject in my sentence or can they be predicate ?

    | seoanalytics
    0
  • glj


    Hi I know this is a general question and there multiple like it. I've read a lot over the years, but can't figure it out. 1. The site in question is https://www.glj.io which had the above problem for years. I've recently revamped it and ready to try again. 2. The specific page is this one which is a review for laptop model G3 3579 from Dell. It was posted about two weeks ago, and it's still the only in-depth review in English, it seems. However, beyond the first 1-3 days, it's been lowered in rank and finally disappeared. That happened with other articles as well, over the years. 3. When searching, for example, for "Dell G3 3579 Review", another post of mine shows up in the 1/2 places - just a general short one mentioning the "G3" (this one), instead the full in-depth review. That it make no sense. 4. Currently, the review itself doesn't show up at all, not at page 2/3 (which is bad anyway) Can anyone shed some light on the situation? or offer pro services for it? It's very frustrating, basically making all my efforts go down in the dunk.. Much appreciated!

    | glj
    0
  • brooksmanley


    Hey friends, I'm looking for a little keyword research direction here, specifically for keywords and phrases with low search volume. I'm just going to give a recent example: I just finished a piece of content on customer experience. I began the process with some keyword research. Based on Moz's keyword explorer, "customer experience" has a monthly volume of 2.9k-4.3k. Sweet. So I move onto related queries and longer tail phrases to narrow my content approach. But just about any relevant phrase shows either a volume of 0-10 or 11-50 and very similar difficulty metrics, making it tough to choose a direction. So "what is customer experience" shows a monthly volume of 0-10. SEM Rush reports ~350 searches a month. I understand SEM Rush uses broader match, but I guess what I'm asking is: how do I perform keyword research with such minuscule volumes and such little data to differentiate? I've looked at Russ Jones' answer to a similar question here on how Keyword Explorer works: https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-good-keyword-volume-score ... but I still don't have a ton of clarity. Any advice would be awesome!

    | brooksmanley
    0
  • aplnzjune18


    I have a few questions regarding keywords that we are wanting to optimize on our site. This may be a bit basic so if this had already been answered elsewhere let me know. Question 1: How many time can I refer to the one word on different pages on the site ? Is there any rules around this? In  theory  the keywords we are looking to include will be relevant to these pages. **Question 2: ** Should I use different variation of the key word or is the one variant fine? Question 3: Looking at the search terms people use from google analytics to get to our site, there is a lot of people using the phrase “sliding windows New Zealand.  Should I write this on the page exactly as “sliding doors New Zealand “ or is “sliding doors” fine? Its just that the former phrase doesn't really work with our communication. I look forward to your advice!

    | aplnzjune18
    0
  • seoanalytics


    Hi, Let' say one of the topics I want to talk about is "wine tasting2. I do a search in the keywords tool and I find related keywords such as "wine tasting chicago" and all the words that I find do not apply to me because I do "wine tastings in Bordeaux". How do I deal in a situation like that ? Can I type in the keyword tool "wine tasting bordeaux" even though my topic is wine tasting ? I took "wine tasting" but I could apply that to the word "chateaux" where none of the related keywords apply to me. I run into issues when the topics are "large". The other question I have is still about "wine tasting" if I find secondary related keywords that apply to me such a "wine tasting in bordeaux", "wine tasting cellars" do I still need to add in my content the word "wine tasting" by itself in addition to the 2 related keywords or can I just only put the 2 related keywords ? Thank you,.

    | seoanalytics
    0
  • aplnzjune18


    Hi we are in the process of redesigning a web site and I’m looking to ensure each of the pages are correctly optimized. I’m concerned that some of the pages do not allow for text or content . From an optimization perspective is there a general rule around the amount of text a page should have and the amount/ration of keywords they should contain? Any advice would be much appreciated.

    | aplnzjune18
    0
  • Digital-DMG


    In order to review the search results for different locations (New York, London, Paris, Berlin, etc.) I have tried several ways to simulate a search query from different locations. None of the ways I tried gave me the correct results, mostly because Google recognized my location anyway. Tools such as Browserstack also didn't give me the results I hoped for. Any ideas how to generate search results from different locations?

    | Digital-DMG
    0
  • Onlineorders


    Hi all, I'd like to know your thoughts on keyword planning and site architecture. I thought it was best practice to structure your website so specific pages target certain keywords. The titles, meta desc. and content on these pages should be unique to that page. I've had good success ranking pages this way. But! How come so often you'll see a website that has no keyword planning ranking so well? Let's take the example: "Bamboo Sheets". A top ranking website in my country sells all kinds of bamboo bedding, including sheets, towels, pillow cases, etc. They have "Bamboo Sheets" in the title & meta description for the main category page (www.store.com/bamboo-sheets) - which is where it should be. But then I see it again on the homepage title & meta (www.store.com) and other pages of the website. So why aren't they cannibalizing their own pages? And why do they blog about Bamboo Sheets and not cannibalize the keyword from there? Is landing page optimization just a myth? It seems entire websites built around a keyword rank just as well, and in most cases, much better than sites with keyword specific landing pages. If you only sell one product this isn't a problem, but for websites that offer multiple products or services, it's incredibly frustrating when trying to compete. It's like Google still gives a lot of authority to keyword rich domain names and business names. Thoughts?

    | Onlineorders
    0
  • noortomlinson


    Having taken a day-long course not long ago, I'm new to SEO and I'm struggling to decide which keywords to target. I work in a really niche area: we make booking engines that allow travel agencies to sell flights, hotels, cars and other travel services online. I know there are various tools on the web (and on Moz) which give you the average monthly searches and competition for each term but I still don't understand how to decide which ones to target. For example, the term 'travel systems' gets a high amount of search and the competition for it is high. However, Google brings back results about prams and buggies so I think I should avoid this one. Another is 'travel solutions' which gets a high amount of search and is low on competition. Google brings back results about travel agencies. This is more our area but our target audience is travel agencies so I'm not really sure I'd be attracting the right traffic? I'd be really grateful for any advice that you can give me.

    | noortomlinson
    0
  • aplnzmarch18


    Hi Im wondering whether I should optimise my site with Organic search terms that drive traffic to the site or the paid terms i use in Google search ads?

    | aplnzmarch18
    0
  • Bush_JSM


    Hey Mozzers, I'm working for a client offering legal services in Spain for people from the UK. When I search 'legal services' in Google.es all the SERPs show sites from the US - mainly NY: https://www.google.es/search?source=hp&ei=tRbXWqzRDoSZsgGY6rmgCA&q=legal+services&oq=legal+services&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l10.2835.4435.0.4512.15.10.0.0.0.0.297.1445.0j4j3.7.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..8.7.1444.0..0i131k1j0i10k1.0.clK-EZ4vVWk There are lots of Spanish sites translated into English and showing sites in Google.es such as http://www.lsosm.org/ offer no value - it's a very weird SERP - any ideas why? Thanks Bush

    | Bush_JSM
    0
  • yaelslater


    Hi Mozers, The site that I work on has two pages with very similar content but written with a different sophistication of language. One page is written in a simple, easy-to-understand voice and the second is written at a high level for researchers. My question is: does the Google algorithm really understand the difference in sophistication and then pivot results such that the more sophisticated page shows up for researchers and the simplistic page shows up for non-researchers (thereby eliminating or greatly reducing competition between these two pages)? Thank you!

    | yaelslater
    0
  • daniel-brooks


    Hi guys, I'm in need of a reliable keyword research tool for Amazon and Walmart. Is anyone able to recommend a good tool? Free or Paid is welcomed. I've found KeywordTool.io/Amazon and MerchantWords but am struggling to find anything else to compare. I'd love to know your experience with these or any other tools you've used in the past. Thanks in advance 🙂

    | daniel-brooks
    2
  • crocman


    I need to sort my product keywords in the countries: (UK) (USA) (Global) etc. What does putting my keyword into brackets do - does it negatively affect my SEO?

    | crocman
    0
  • nhhernandez


    We use Keyword Planner to get a rough idea if a keyword has search volumes and worth tracking. But recently, it's showing zeroes (all locations) for very broad search terms such as "corn seed" "sorghum seed" "canola seed" and all variations of these three with "seed" in the phrase. We checked trends and there are searches for it. Has keyword planner gone bonkers? There were search volumes for corn, canola and sorghum variations, just not words with "seed", which is very odd. "corn grain" has 9,900 searches and "canola plant" has 5,400 searches, for example. "canola seed" has 201-500 searches on Moz, so keyword planner, I think really filtered out seed words. Is there another tool where we could just copy/paste or import a list and it'll show us the search volumes? I uploaded words on Moz, but we can only get search vol ranges and mostly don't have data yet for Australian searches. Does SEMRush have this capability too? I couldn't seem to find where to upload a list. If Google just filtered out these words, is there a way to get around it?

    | nhhernandez
    1
  • jayoliverwright


    Hi Guys, Was wondering if anyone knows of any tools which can group large lists of keywords. Currently using http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-grouper Any other good tools to check out? Cheers.

    | jayoliverwright
    0
  • bhsiao


    I am planning my seo project using Moz tools. I am finding keywords that are close to each other. What is the best way to optimize? If I made a page for each of the close words, it would pretty much be duplicate content. Is it best to go ahead and make a page for each and try to make content a bit different? How different does it have to be? Or, would i try to use the different versions of the keyword on one good page. Thank you!

    | bhsiao
    0
  • ChemistryMarketing


    Hi guys, I am trying to get search traffic for a list of keywords which I put together a few years ago for one of my clients, this was before Google made changes to their Keyword Planner. When I am adding the list into Google Keyword Planner it is "grouping" a number of the keywords/phrases together, and therefore removing 13 of the keywords from the original list of 59 keywords. Is there a way around this so I can get search volume for the original list, and not the cut down one? I am specifically using Google Keyword Planner as I want to get search volume for a number of specific locations in the UK. Any comments/feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Jack. I19Op

    | ChemistryMarketing
    1
  • seoanalytics


    Hello, In Keyword explorer out of all the possibilities : https://moz.com/blog/announcing-keyword-explorer-mozs-new-keyword-research-tool Include a Mix of Sources Only Include Keywords With All of the Keyword Terms Exclude Your Query Terms to Get Broader Ideas Based on Closely Related Topics etc... Which one should I use to do my keyword research because they all me different possibilities of keywords. Rand in his article says closely related topic is best for single words like piedmont for example I imagine but what about 2 word keywords like bike tours what is best to use... Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    0
  • rx300


    I understand how to do basic keyword research and how to review a competitor's code (meta tags, etc.). But what is the best method for finding out what a competitor's target keyword is for a particular web page? For example, the URL www.example.com/about-us, what is the best method for finding out what their target keyword is? I have been using a keyword density tool to run the URLs and find the keyword or phase that appears most often but would think there is a better way?

    | rx300
    0
  • Veevlimike


    Hi folks, I'm a total newbie so please go easy. I've published 4 blogs on my website and am using the free Yoast plugin to guide me on my SEO. The blogs have been promoted in various places using organic and paid social. However, the more I look into SEO the more I'm realising that I did literally NO keyword research and the keywords I'm using are pretty useless. The question is this: it should be easy enough for my to change the content of the blog, the meta description etc to reflect the new keywords, but what about the URL / slug?. Is there any way to change this without causing me a massive headache or does having my new keywords in the slug even matter? Thanks, Mike.

    | Veevlimike
    0
  • usaccess608


    i am needing help deciding a domain name for a yelp like review site. the domains are listed below: mouthism.com guidies.com yellerz.com yellables.com yellism.com rateism.com yellers.net cryable.com talkbuds.com eritics.com (like epinions.com) gocraze.com iyeller.com venuers.com yeller.com.au (i wanted to start in australia first but find out yeller.com belongs to someone else so what can i do? If i start with yeller.com.au it will be hard to expand to worldwide as need to change the name to iyeller.com or yellerz.com instead of yeller.com.) thanks ray

    | usaccess608
    0
  • niritoli


    I have a question with regards to the monthly search ranges. I read your information on how the range is calculated but it does not explain the following. Google AU comparison for "hives" and "urticaria". The range give is 11.5-30.3K per month for both terms. This is highly unusual because we know that people use hives more than urticaria when searching for the same disease. Interesting this is the only medical term that behaves like this and want to understand the reason why.

    | niritoli
    0
  • BJack


    I know this has been covered a million times but I cannot find one related to mine as far as brand goes. We have a 3 word company name (brand) and all three words are excellent keywords. We rank decent in google and other search engines, but I did not know if I should put our brand all together, or keep them spaced since I am using the keywords in the title in other places. Our company name is ex. A B C Title page is as follows and I am showing where our company name appears in the title for our pages. I am just not wanting to stuff the keywords in the title, although it is hard not to with our brand. I do not want to give out our company name. Below I am showing where part of our name appears in the title of pages. The (C) in the first part of the title is singular. Our name and brand for C is plural. I hope you understand. After 10 years in business we are redoing some things to make it even better. Moz Pro has been wonderful tool for us, the last 40 days. Main Keyword B C | Secondary Keyword | A B C Should it be Main Keyword B C | Secondary Keyword | ABC Thank you all!

    | BJack
    0
  • IcarusSEO


    We have looked up our direct competitor to see what keywords they rank #1 for (aside from their own company name). We have narrowed it down to 3 that we want to focus on. Our plan is to build internal landing pages, external landing pages and beef up our content.  Is that a good strategy to start or are we missing something?

    | IcarusSEO
    0
  • IcarusSEO


    I'm writing my meta descriptions for my products. Right now I have it as <product name="">at <company name="">and a brief description.</company></product> However, I was wondering if I put a word in front of the <product name="">such as "Wholesale". So for example</product> Wholesale <product name="">at <company name="">.......</company></product> Is that advisable? Or should the product name always be the first word?

    | IcarusSEO
    0
  • Dalessi


    Hi I recently signed up for a Pinterest account, but I can not tell if the link on your profile page is "Do-follow" or not. Thank you in advance for your help.

    | Dalessi
    0
  • unirmk


    Hi everyone,
    I am struggling to remember the correct term to describe a substring of a KW phrase. For example- the KW "top online seo tools" is composed of the substrings:
    top online seo tools top online seo tools
    top online seo tools top online seo tools top online seo tools There is a term that describes those "KWs within KWs", and I am going crazy trying to remember what it is... Thanks!

    | unirmk
    0
  • xdunningx


    Hello I have put my focus keyword in the first paragraph of the product description in a tag yet Yoast tells me it is not there. Here you can see my problem: My question to you is: will this affect anything negatively on my SEO? Link to see full picture of what I'm explaining: https://likechimp.com/facebook-shop/buy-10000-facebook-event-attendees/ Your thoughts and feedback on my content would be greatly appreciated as I constantly want to improve! DLoEu

    | xdunningx
    0
  • joseph.defranco


    I've been doing quite a bit of research on keyword cannibalization and duplicate content. I have two pages with nearly the same H1. The rest of the body is different, with a few similar overlapping keywords and points. Am I right in that nealry the same keyword in H1 on two separate landing pages will damage by SEO?

    | joseph.defranco
    1
  • GregDixson


    So the Keyword Difficulty Tool will be retired from the end of this month. Is anyone else worried about this? - because I just don't trust the numbers coming back from Keyword Explorer. Never have. I've even raised this with Moz staff previously, when there was a huge difference between the score given by the keyword difficulty tool vs keyword explorer. From what I see in Domain and Page authority and in the SERPs then the score from keyword difficulty tool, was always more accurate, and thankfully have been able to use both tools, but from next month I feel somewhat uneasy about solely relying on the score from Keyword Explorer. Thoughts? and feel free to run your own tests on keywords and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

    | GregDixson
    0
  • fersu


    I have a question about the use of Apostrohes in the text of your site for your keyword. Most of the info I have found says in most cases it does not matter, but it depends.  Most of the info about this issue I have found is a few years old. I am leaning towards not using it at all to make it easier for everyone writing for the website to always do it the same way. Here is an example:   Lawyer’s Lawyers' Lawyers Does it matter if I use the apostrophe?

    | fersu
    0
  • Scratch_MM


    Does optimization of PDF files for search matter in 2017? If yes, what is the optimal way to do it? Is there a risk that it will compete for rankings with the parent page that is it's linked to?

    | Scratch_MM
    1
  • xdunningx


    Hello I am looking to hire a professional content writer who can do keyword research and content writing in one. Has anyone ever used a professional freelancer for this and if so, do you have any recommendations for me in terms of freelancers or websites to help me find someone? Thank you

    | xdunningx
    0

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