What is the relationship/difference between categories and keywords in terms of google local seo?
-
I know that they are very similar as search signals, but I would like to understand the exact relationship. My company is in the process of adding local seo services to our seo offerings, and we are trying to hammer out a process for determining optimal categories for businesses based on keywords we are already using for optimizing their sites. Any insights or suggestions on how best to do this would be much appreciated.
-
Hi Rahul,
I am assuming that you are talking about Google Place Page categories. Hopefully, I'm correct and my response will be pertinent.
A first step is to look at the top ranking competitors of your clients to see what Place Page categories they have chosen.
I consider it critical to choose at least 3 of Google's pre-set categories, and I use Mike Blumenthal's awesome local categories tool to see what my choices are:
http://blumenthals.com/index.php?Google_LBC_Categories
If it's necessary to choose custom categories, make sure they describe what the business is rather than what it does. So, 'plumber' vs. 'plumbing'.
Never include location information in the categories (no city names, no zip codes).
In addition to looking at competitors' Place Pages and using keyword research tools to turn up potential categories for your client, never skip the step of asking the client which categories HE thinks are most important. Very often, you will find yourself working with a client such as an attorney who may fit 8 or 9 different potential categories. He needs to help you narrow this down to his 5 most important categories (typically, the ones in which he does the most work).
Keywords you are using to optimize your clients' websites differ in that they can describe what the client does (plumbing) instead of just what he is (plumber) and they will certainly incorporate geo data (cities, counties, neighborhoods, zip codes, etc.). You have a wider latitude to work with on the website, whereas in Places, you must fit yourself neatly into a 5 phrase box without violating the guidelines.
Additional notes:
I found this article to be pretty good:
Don't miss the comments on that post, too.
There is strong evidence that picking categories well is one of the most important steps in creating a Google Place Page. Hopefully, my feedback and the information in the article I've linked to will get you off on the right foot with this. Good luck!
Miriam
-
Categories are higher up the "relevance heirarchy" than keywords because local seo is in its infancy. So for example if you have a plumber that works on heating systems, sprinklers and air conditioning systems, the plumber would be the category and could provide instant local seo value as a plumber and for all of the other the associated keywords that I showed. Whereas if you put all your focus on air conditioning, it is too far down the heirarchy to provide any plumbing value for a keyword search, and obviously wouldn't be relevant to heating and sprinklers....
To determine the optimal keywords you need to do the kleyword research and work with your clients. But with local seo, make sure you start at the top of the heirarchy.
Hope this make sense....
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
-
Keyword Research for Low Volume Keywords
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!
Keyword Research | | brooksmanley0 -
Keyword difficulty report - am I stupid??
Hi, Im a programmer but SEO newbie and I am trying out Moz Pro. To be honest I feel really disheartened right now, I find the world of SEO very difficult and full of conflicting information. Anyway, I am trying to get my head around the Keyword difficulty tool in order to determine what keyword I want to go after and what I would need to do in order to outrank the competitors. The website with the highest PA, most external links to the domain (4000 versus around 80-90), the most linking root domain and the best on page optimasations ranks nr 5. The website that ranks 1 is the only one with good social signals. All of the websites has the keyword in the page title. What am I missing? This makes no sense to me. Is this Keyword tool reliable? VERY grateful for any help from you guys.. /Emma
Keyword Research | | EmmaGrey0 -
How can I get a list of keywords related to my specific keyword?
With a keyword such as 'vacant land,' how can I find related keywords?
Keyword Research | | Jeraldine0 -
How are similar keyword phrases related?
I'm new to SEO and have been reading a lot to try to get up to speed. There is one concept that I'm not clear about and am not sure what to search on to find an answer. Let's say I'm trying to target 2 keyword phrases "Wordpress SEO" and "Wordpress SEO plugin". In the content of my web page should I always write "Wordpress SEO plugin" because it'll count towards both phrases I'm trying to target? Or would Google be smart enough to only give me credit for "Wordpress SEO plugin" in that case and I should also put just "Wordpress SEO" in other places in my content? Hopefully that makes sense. Thanks in advance!
Keyword Research | | Yuba302 -
E-commerce Categories
Hello fellow SEOmozers! I'm rebuilding out e-commerce site and have a question about categories. We sell branded servers, workstations, storage and related parts/upgrades. I know that nesting categories too deep is not recommended (and slows down the shopping cart), however if were to create more main categories then I'm affraid of keyword stuffing or spamming, do you think this would be ok or what would you recommend I do in my situation? <colgroup><col width="131"></colgroup>
Keyword Research | | igor.pinchevskiy
| Dell Rack Servers |
| Dell Tower Servers |
| Dell Blade Servers |
| Dell Storage |
| HP Rack Servers |
| HP Tower Servers |
| HP Blade Servers |
| HP Storage |
| IBM Rack Servers |
| IBM Tower Servers |
| IBM Blade Servers |
| IBM Storage |
| Dell Workstations |
| HP Workstations |
| IBM Workstations |
| Dell Hard Drives |
| HP Hard Drives |
| IBM Hard Drives |
| Dell RAM | Memory |
| HP RAM | Memory |
| IBM RAM | Memory | Thanks for all your input, opinions, and comments!0 -
Not Set Keywords
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...
Keyword Research | | SBRMarketing0 -
Two spaces between keywords?
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)
Keyword Research | | peterds0 -
How can i track keywords history
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 ?
Keyword Research | | omarfk0