Can I get your input on keyword usage in the title tag
-
Hello fellow mozzers!
I've been struggling with my title tag and would like to get your opinion.
We provide IT services in the Los Angeles area. I've been doing keyword research for the past week and found about 400 keywords from various sources. I then looked at my top 5 competitors on Google and analyzed their homepage title tags, the most common keywords that they use in their title tags are:
IT Support Los Angeles
Computer Support Los Angeles
Network Consulting Los Angeles
Network Support Los Angeles
IT Services Los AngelesSince it is recommended to have your title tag under 70 characters I've compiled the following title tag for my home page:
IT Services, Network Consulting, IT and Network Support in Los Angeles
which is exactly 70 characters, however my company name is an additional 9 characters, I think it would be wise to include in the title tag of the home page however I can't decide if I should exceed the limit by including the company name to the title tag or should I remove something from the title tag and then add the company name?
1. What do you guys think, is that a good title tag to use as is?
2. Should I add the company name without removing any keywords or remove a keyword?
3. I'm trying to target local traffic since I can't compete with the big dogs yet, so I want to be in the SERPs when someone searches IT Services Los Angeles, IT Support Los Angeles, etc... Do I need to add Los Angeles after each keyword, or I can use a single instance of Los Angeles like in the example title tag that I have?
4. For the other remaining 400+/- keywords I want to use some of them to create static pages and some for blog posts, is that the way to go?
Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!!!
Thank you!!!
-
Understood, thanks!
-
Yes, broad is not as measurable as [exact]. Especially when you are targeting local keywords.
-
Hi Donnie,
The 320 volume is the local search exact match, however the broad match on IT Services Los Angeles is much higher, should I focus on the exact match instead of the broad match when choosing keywords?
-
It's best to build your site for your users and not try to manipulate the search engines. I would go for one keyword per page two max. Placing two keywords in a title may look funny in most cases. In your case "IT Support Los Angeles" has the highest local search volume 320 out of the keywords you mentioned.
Adding spammy footer links does not help your users and most likely is not helping your competitors (it may have in the past) rather putting their sites in danger.
I understand that you want to rank for multipul locations, which can be done without spamming. For a good internal linking structure watch this video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday
-
Hello Donnie,
Thank you for such a quick answer!
I did another search on keyword difficulty tool IT Support Los Angeles vs IT Services Los Angeles and IT Services Los Angeles gets much more traffic, take a look:
Would it better to use something like this:
IT Services and Support in Los Angeles by Company name?
Also in your expert opinion:
How many keywords or keyword phrases do you recommend including in the titles?
Most of my competitors have a bunch of locations/cities that they service in their footers, like IT Support Los Angeles, IT Support Sherman Oaks, IT Support Encino, etc... as well as pointing to the same page (which from what I understand is duplicate content) and too many footer links. However 4 out 5 use them and I don't think they've been penalyzed as they've been holding the top 5 spots for some time now. Should I try the same tactic or avoid it and hoping that by not using these techniques it should help in outranking them?
Thanks again!
-
I like to start my keyword research by examining the search volume and competitive organic rates on SEOmoz.
http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty (pro members only)
| IT Services Los Angeles | 54 | 165,000 | 165,000 | 170 | 170 | Full Analysis |
| Los Angeles IT Services | 60 | unavailable | unavailable | unavailable | unavailable | Full Analysis |
| IT Support Los Angeles | 53 | 22,200 | 22,200 | 320 | 320 | Full Analysis |
| Los Angeles IT Support | 53 | 22,200 | 22,200 | 91 | 110 | Full Analysis |out of your selected keywords I would use "IT Support Los Angeles" as your main keyword (highest local exact search volume with lower competition level). Use this with diversity in you title, description, H1, and at least 2 times in your body one regular and one bold or italic.
Here's a good title for your site: "IT Support Los Angeles by [Company name]"
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
-
Need advice w/ keywords & content to get started with SEO on my own website
I am a real estate agent, marketing properties to Germans moving to / buying an overseas home in my country. I inquired with a few different SEO agencies and I cannot afford their services, $3000+ a month and my market is not huge as you will see in the search data below. So I will have to go ahead and do SEO on my own and will obviously need some help. The space is not competitive which is awesome. That's how the volume and competition look for the most popular (& broadest) search term is "immobilien countryname" (property countryname), according to Ubersuggest - attachment 1 (translation for reference): property countryname 1300 property in countryname 480 buy property countryname 260 property countryname seaview 170 buy property countryname 110 Here is an example of the top 10 searches for houses by volume. (Attachment 2 is a screenshot of the competition) 1. haus in countryname kaufen 720 $0.14
Keyword Research | | dnlpwrsellr
(house in countryname buy)
2. countryname haus kaufen 590 $0.36
(countryname house buy)
3. einfamilienhaus countryname haus kaufen 210 $0.45
(single family countryname house buy)
4. häuser in countryname kaufen 170 $0.29
(houses in countryname buy)
5. haus countryname kaufen 170 $0.46
(house countryname buy)
6. günstige häuser in countryname 110 $0.10
(cheap houses in countryname)
7. häuser kaufen in countryname location1 110 $0.22
(houses buy in countryname location1)
8. haus kaufen countryname meerblick 90 $0.20
(house buy countryname sea-view)
9. haus in countryname location2 kaufen 70 $0.03
(house in countryname location2 buy)
10. countryname haus am meer kaufen 70 $0.05
(countryname house near the sea buy) the first 5 results are taken by big portals, just the top one has done any optimization at all as you can see the competition is pretty lame, just some of them are doing any SEO, pretty badly (including spammy links), still rank. The way it seems, there are 4 main categories to optimize for: Properties Houses Apartments 'Move to countryname' information Should I optimize my homepage for a 'property' term, 3 other pages for 'house', 'apartment, and 'info' terms? How do I pick keywords to optimize for, esp. considering that they are basically the same e.g.: house in countryname buy countryname house buy house countryname buy or property countryname countryname property property in countryname ...and should I pick just one? What sort of content could I include in a "buy a house in countryname" type of page and how do I write around such keywords? I am having an issue finding examples to follow as there is no competition to emulate and the other markets/countries are dominated by large portals which also seemingly get ranked based on size / authority. Beyond that there is virtually no interest in the country = no traffic, besides general bs such as the language, the weather and such where there are a bunch of huge websites on the first page - so I am not sure what content could I use to drive traffic. I will come up with something, but there are no obvious ones.. My domain name is 1 year old, I have no links yet. Moz reports Page Authority 5, Domain Authority 2 for my domain. I reckon that's enough for starters... Any input and ideas are more than welcome! Thank you. Qy2gat6.png tG93AJt.png0 -
Where to use which keywords...
After doing keyword research and coming up with a list of keywords/phrases that I'd like to optimise a specific page for (an additional page to an existing website), I get confused about WHERE to use which keywords. For example, choosing between two keywords like home insurance and specialist home insurance. Let's say home insurance is more searched than the other, and but is more difficult to rank for, and specialist home insurance is less searched but easier to rank for. Firstly, which one should I use as my "main keyword" and secondly, what benefit does the other keyword(s) then have on the rest of the page, and were do I use them? I hope this makes sense. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | Jana_Joubert1 -
Is the Adwords keywords planner accurate ?
Hey guyz,
Keyword Research | | atakala
As you guyz do, I base all my seo effort into the keywords' traffic and quality which I can get from Adwords Keywords Planner.
But this post has confused my mind .
It' says the average searches doesn't exactly the average searches.
And everything is okay here now I can say that of course it's not %100 accurate.
But the shocking part is he gives an example of how a big gap there is between real searches number and adwords keywords planner tools give us . What do you think guyz?
Can it be true ?
(And also last time I asked a question, Randy has replied me, If possible please Randy do it again :D.)
Best wishes.0 -
Help finding some decent keywords
Anyone care to help a SEO Newbie find a couple of key words that would be easier to rank for for my website that provides kayak fishing information? mysite: yakangler.com The key words that I've identified are as follows: best kayak
Keyword Research | | mr_w
fishing from a kayak
fishing kayak review
fishing kayaks
kayak and fishing
kayak fishing
kayak for fishing
kayak reviews
kayak rigging
kayak weight limit
kayaks fishing
kayaks for fishing But I'm worried I'm missing the point, I don't see hardly any traffic from most of these. I've really tried to rank for "kayak fishing" but seem to be totally lost in the Google Panda abyss. Any advice on a different word or strategy would be greatly appreciated!0 -
Keyword search tool or API
Anyone have a suggestion for a simplistic (scaled down) version of a keyword research tool that I can put on our website? We need our clients to be able to perform some basic keyword research on their own without getting lost in the details of something too robust. We would like to control aspects of the tool, capture the data from the site visitor and move those results (from their searches) into a database or other web application.
Keyword Research | | webindustry0 -
International Keyword Ranking
I want measure my ranking for keywords in various countries and search engines. If I use a tool such as rank checker to determine my rank for google.uk, google.au.com, etc... is that accurate, or does my IP still affect the rankings I see? If I use a VPS such as Hide My Ass (or another product you would recommend), would that make my ranking results more accurate? I also want to measure my ranking in Russia, where Yandex is very strong so a tool to measure my Yandex ranking + Google would be ideal. What method you would recommend to accurately determine my rankings in different countries? Thank you!
Keyword Research | | theLotter0 -
Prioritizing Keywords
Hi Everyone, I've been using many of the articles to find out the best way to create a list of long tail keywords I wish to target. Anyway, I used Google AdWords Tool in order to find out how many Global/Local Searches per month, and the Keyword Difficulty Tool on this site in order to find the difficulty score. With these two metrics, I've compiled a good list, but I wanted to know how people prioritize keywords. I was thinking of creating a formula in excel in order to compare both the difficulty score and the amount of searches, but I wanted to know other people's advice and how they decided to prioritize the long tail keywords they compiled. I am still a bit of a newbie at this, so any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Keyword Research | | Seiyav0 -
Run a batch of keywords 1 by 1 through Adwords Keyword tool
Hi, I'm looking for a tool that will be able to run a list of keywords 1 by 1 through the Google Adwords keyword tool and place them together in a list, in order to get as much long tail keywords as possible. Thanks for any suggestion!
Keyword Research | | DeptAgency0