Over Optimization?
-
Yet another basic question....is it bad to try and optimize a page for numerous keywords that are all related? My site is an eCommerce site. So for and example: I am trying to optimize my homepage (www.shopconfections.com) for about 20 keywords that all directly describe my site.
On product pages I am optimizing for about 15 keywords that all directly relate to my product.
Many of my keywords are long tailed. Can there be too many? What are the consequences of that?
Thanks!
Shara -
Here's a good quick reference for understanding the difference between broad, phrase and exact matches.
-
Very helpful! Appreciate your time and though!
-
I'll add one more thing that I forgot to mention. How low do you go on competitive keywords? It's a rather arbitrary number, but I've heard it recommended that you should look for longer tail phrases that return a minimum of 500 searches a month and maximum of 10,000. If you have a lot of products that don't generate more than 500 exact phrase searches a month, you can only go with the best returns available.
-
Good morning Shara. Here's some observations and final thoughts:
I did a quick comparison look at both variations of keywords. The broadmatch of the terms is the same at 1,000 local searches a month each with a cpc average of .84 and .85 respectively. This data is not very helpful in that the broadmatch results suggests Google is seeing the phrase similarly (semantically) and does not help you make a wise decision.
"Preppy Monogrammed Gifts" phrase match returns 880 monthly results a month with an average cost off .88 a click. Better information for you, but better yet lets look at exact match results.
Finally, the exact match results for Preppy Monogrammed Gifts come back with 720 results a month with an average .92 a click. Exact match for Monogrammed Preppy Gifts returns only 12 results a month at .54 a click.
You could also put this information in the AdWords traffic estimator for more cost/benefit analysis but for the sake of time we'll go with results from Keywords.
I would interpret this data and optimize for the Preppy Monogrammed Gifts as it has a sizable (but more competitive) reach. The competition drops off so much for monogrammed preppy gifts, you have to ask if it is worth the time and effort considering your ROI could be so low because of the low volume. Once you optimize for Preppy Monogrammed Gifts you will probably rank well for the alternate phrase anyway because they are so close semantically and Google recognizes that.
Finally, when looking at Keyword results, I make decisions based on "phrase" and [exact match] with exact match having the most influence driving my decisions.
-
Hi Again,
I was mulling over all that you suggested and I am curious about a few things...
1. so obviously I need to cull my keywords down...but how do you deal with all the iterations of keywords that someone might use to search for. For example one of my main keywords is _monogrammed preppy gifts. _So if I use that keyword and skip preppy monogrammed gifts then what about those who search preppy monogrammed gifts? Does that question make sense?
2. I used Google AdWords to search and get variations of the keywords. The decision was made to go for the lower competition words because I thought I would be more successful with that tactic. So if I cull my keywords do I stay with the lower competition words which of course have less searches?
Thanks much!
-
Wow...I am in trouble!
Thank you, appreciate the guidance!
-
Wow, Shara. WAY TOO MANY keywords for any page. I'm concerned for you as it violates the most basic principles of SEO. You might consider this:
1. Spend time in Google Webmaster tools and glean all you can from its SEO instruction.
2. Spend time in the learning center here at SEOmoz.
3. Narrow optimization to the most relevent keywords by user intent, traffic volume and cost/benefit.
4. Understand principle of keyword cannabilization.
5. Understand principle of duplicate content.
6. Title tags are limited to 60-70 characters. Its a challenge for all of us to use that space as wisely as possible in conjunction with our on-page optimization. You've only got space in the title tag to optimize for 1-2 maybe three keywords depending on how long the phrase.
7. Typically, organic search results for an ecommerce site will land on category and product pages.
8. Category pages are typically made up of shorter tail 1-2 keyword phrases (preppy gifts or monogrammed preppy gifts).
9. Product pages are typically longer tail 3-4 (personalized dry erase board).
10. Good luck!
-
Hi Shara!
Good question, and it's my opinion that this is not a good idea.
A more practical approach would be to optimize individual landing pages for specific keywords. If it sounds like more work, it likely will be, but done properly you'll increase the user experience, Google will favor it, still be able to achieve desired organic listings, and hopefully see an improved ROI with regard to your SEO efforts.
Can you give a specific example of a product that needs 15 keywords? It might help to examine this a bit more closely.
Thanks,
W
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Optimizing images and more for page speed
Hey everyone! I run a comparison/affiliate site for men's clothing. On the side of that, I have a Squarespace site for inspiration, articles and outfit pictures. I've tried to optimize site speed for the Squarespace site without much success. I've run all pictures trough JPEGmini to decrease file size but it doesn't seem to be enough. Below I attached the result I got when I run one of the pages trough Lighthouse and GTmetrix. Do you have recommendations of what I can do to improve the results? Is it a good idea to use next-gen formats for pictures as Google suggests as an example? Kind regards,
On-Page Optimization | | JonastriesSEO
Jonas XU131T0.png sPD3w13.png1 -
We´re in trouble with our on site internal link optimization - please help
Dear Moz community, We have made a great mistake. Looking at keyword search volumes somehow Moz showed volumes for two keywords which only differentiate by an '**s (plural) as same. **Now we optimized our internal links (all links have the keyword) for the singular word. Now looking at other search volume estimations from competitors we see, that the plural has 5 times bigger volume. Our issue: If we change some of the category links now to another keyword, we will loose our ranking with the singular word. Correct? If we do not change any of our internal links, we will never rank in top 6 with the keyword. (currently singular is 6 and plural is 15) What would you reccomend?
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud0 -
Over Optimization - What exactly is it?
I keep hearing this term "over optimization" and people assuming they have received an over optimization penalty. I also hear people say, "You need to optimize every page on your site." So at what point does a site become "over optimized?" Are there any good reads around here that explain this better?
On-Page Optimization | | kadesmith1 -
Removing old URLs that are being used for my on page optimization?
Is there a way to remove old URL's that are still being used for my keywords for my on page optimization? They are giving me grades of F since they no longer exist and if I change the URL to the current one, the grade becomes an A, but they are still showing after the new crawl.
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
FAQS For Seo & Long Tail Optimization
Would it be ok to create a small FAQ section on the particular page I am working on using long tail keywords, all which have low competition, high search volume? I see a few competitors ranking this way, but it does not flow, its very obvious they are stuffing. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Optimization of keywords in singular and plural
By Google Traductor: Hi, two questions:
On-Page Optimization | | romaro
1. What about the optimization of keywords in singular and plural?Do you recommend use landing pages in the plural and singularwords? as different results on Google searches in the plural andsingular.
2. Do you think that is a good strategy to generate a sitemap tosearch results pages based on searches by users of our site? Weplan to start generating a sitemap with a top 500 of the most popular searches and then scroll through to 1000, 2000, and more0 -
Optimize a PowerPoint presentation
how to SE optimize a PowerPoint presentation on the website? Will it help to upload it to slideshare ?
On-Page Optimization | | intiGrow0 -
Re-optimizing onsite SEO, can it hurt?
We finished the re-design of our website a few months ago. We have hired a few freelance SEO guys that were horrible. We then decided to pull the SEO work in-house. I got nominated to do the SEO work. I started with what I thought was pretty good on-site SEO. At that time, with no experience, I was pretty proud of myself. I managed to get a bunch of our pages at top SERPs for long-tail keywords. Good enough for then. Now when I go look at the pages, I'm embarrassed to admit that it's my work. Please be kind. 🙂 Since then I have been trying to learn as much as possible about SEO. I'm certainly far ahead of where I was a few months ago. For the past few weeks I've been trying to focus my efforts on creating original keyword rich original content. Our competitors all have tried this, but their content is hardly readable by humans. Anyhow, we finished our fist article, it got indexed by G almost immediately and started to push our keyword SERPs up within just a few days. Now for my question. I have a much better understanding of on-page SEO and realize that I could make many improvements to ALL of our other pages. However, these pages are already doing fairly well with the SERPS and are moving up a few ranks a week. I'm very tempted to throw caution to the wind and completely redo all of our on-page SEO for our entire site. Is this a good strategy?
On-Page Optimization | | dmac
Should I expect our SERPs to drop a little, a lot, or not at all? I look forward to your response. DMac0