SEO Keyword Research
-
Hi,
We are SEO beginners so please bear with us!
We are trying to promote "Web based Invoicing Software". The SEO company we have signed with offer us 5 keywords for the package we are on with them. They have suggested\offered us:
1. Invoicing Software - Fine
2. Online Invoicing - Fine
3. Online Invoicing Software - Covered by 1 and 2
4. Small Business Invoicing Software - Covered by 1
5. Invoice Template - Fine. Will Invoice templateS be covered on this one too?My question is does number 3 cover number 1,2 & 4 anyway? If so I am thinking to not go for 1,2, & 4 just keep 3 and choose three other new keywords. Would this be a better strategy and "more for our money?" Or, keep 1 and 2 and lose 3 and 4, would that be a good option. So, in summary options are (all assuming keeping number 5)
1. Keep all
2. Keep 1 & 2 - Lose 3 & 4
3. Keep 3 - Lose 1,2 & 44. Any other combo you can suggest?
Any advice welcomed
Thanks
nutnut
-
Totally normal. For me, what I keep in mind, is that there''s so much great information out there and awesome boards like this where people share experiences, and there's several plans of attack. Long tail can help rank for some short tail but I'd never recommend expecting it to be interchangeable.
For example, "software" is way, way more competitive to rank for since it's everything that falls under software - Microsoft Office, Amazon, Wiki, PCMag, New Egg - and so general that it's hard to get high rankings on that word alone. There's also a HUGE difference in user intent on "software" (I want Windows 8; or, what's new in the software world) and "online invoicing software" (I need software that lets me do invoicing online). Sometimes with long tail, you capture a better/more accurate audience to then give you better conversions.
Good luck
-
Thanks for the response, thats very helpful insight for us. We thought long tail did cover short tail so we may have to rethink our keywords altogether now. Maybe we should go for the easier long tail to start with and work up to the short tail. Is that a normal plan for a start up with limited budget?
Thanks
-
Good for you for checking to see if what you are being offered may be worthy. First, how did they get these words? The reason I ask is because the biggest keyword battle I fight is figuring out how our SEARCHERS search, not what we think our customers/potentials use.
What do I mean? I'll use an example. "Benchtop printer" is the company term but people are searching for a "desktop printer." Optimize for benchtop printer and you'll never connect.
So, make sure that whatever you pick maps back to your users/customers. If you don't know, then you are risking everyone on nothing.
As far as this list goes, assuming it's vetted, there's a difference between head, or short tail "software" and long tail "online invoicing software" keywords - long tail DO NOT automatically cover short tail. Even plural terms aren't interchangeable with singular. Head, or short tail, terms are usually way harder and competitive to rank for.
Beyond that, because I don't know how you are grouping your site content or what your hierarchy will look like, I won't comment on what to keep or what to leave. Just picking keywords in no way ensures good SEO.
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
-
Why would a newly created site, have ranked ahead of our site for keyword that we are optimized for?
This newly created site has a DA of 1 and PA of 1, no backlinks, no optimized urls, the keyword they ranked better than us on was listed a total of 6 times on the homepage. Our PA is 29 and DA is 18 for the page that ranks for this keyword. They really copied a few elements of our site but made sure to change a few things, but also list at the bottom of their site 5 keywords that are crucial to our niche industry but they're all linking to the same page. Any ideas? It's an SEO guy running the site, we've watched them toy with adwords trying to be number 1, but not liking the price, so they are here and there with it. Mainly I don't see why they'd rank better for this keyword, we our site have prolly 500% more content that's both of quality and relevance to our customers, in the form of Pdfs, infographics, help sections, and video. Very baffled here, any advice would rock!
Competitive Research | | Deacyde1 -
Competitive Keywords on Adwords
We are in a very competitive industry for adwords and would like to know what is the best way to find low searched keywords with a low cpc - it is the low cpc we are really after. Thanks
Competitive Research | | webguru20140 -
Competitors ranking in top three with worse SEO
Ok I am at a loss. Our client is trying to rank for keywords like "dental assistant programs utah", but they are still on the bottom of page 1/top of page 2. The guys in the top 3 have terrible SEO. No links, newer domains, etc. I looked into it extensively and learned about the "honeymoon period" people talk about but we are long past that. I've looked through webmaster tools to see if there are any issues, and I can't find a thing. Anyone have an idea of what we could be doing wrong that is making us be put down so far on the page? Before I got here the SEO guys were doing older tactics which I think was starting to hurt them with penguin and what not so I tried my best to delete the crap content and clean everything up on the website. thanks for all your help! I really appreciate it.
Competitive Research | | boyackp0 -
Finding competitors best keywords?
How do I learn my competitor's best keywords? I realize I can add more keywords to my campaign but the problem is - I am not sure I am thinking of the right keywords. I don't want to compare with the keywords I am targeting - I want to know what THEY are targeting.
Competitive Research | | dealblogger1 -
Different SERP results in browsers / different result pages for keyword in browser
Hi, I am making the SEO reports for a travel agency and I have the following problem. SEOmoz shows me the website is on page 1, for a keyword. Yesterday, a google search with firefox showed me the same position, while, searching from a different computer on google using firefox gave me another position. The URL shown was also different. I asked some friends to do the search - the results were the same - first page. Today, firefox shows me the second URL on the 4'th page, and the result from the first page of google does not appear, while Chrome still shows me the first URL on the first page. I have no idea why the URL that was ranking well does not appear on the first page with Firefox, and why it appears on the first page with Chrome, or why the URL that was ranking bad -meaning page 4, appears on Firefox but does not appear on Chrome. Can someone give me some advice?
Competitive Research | | Netlogiq0 -
How can my site not ranked on easy keyword while it currently ranked 1 on difficult keyword??
The site in question is http://ikt.co.id The site is perfectly optimized (or even over optimized) for keyword "Bikin Website Murah" (in Indonesia it means "develop an affordable website") currently if you search on both google.co.id AND google.com, it ranked on #10 (on google.co.id) and it ranked on #7 (on google.com), and both term only return 1.3 million results I have A LOT OF pages that started with 'bikin website' , or 'website murah' ... there are a lot of them, and i have had a lot of backlinks on those pages too (have been manually building a lot of links, starting from creating a tutorial article and blog submission and many other way) .. the site has been perfectly optimized for that keyword For example we have http://ikt.co.id/blog-category/bikin-website-murah-promo-terbaru.html (for newest promotion) http://ikt.co.id/blog/bikin-website-seo-murah-discount-40-sampai-31-juli-2011.html (for discount 40% promo that lasted untill 31 juli 2011) AND YET, if you search on google.co.id for keyword "2000 likes facebook" , our lone page that i created when our facebook likes reached that amount, RANKED #1!! , and please let me tell you this term return 400 million results++ (on google.com this keyword ranked #19, on 500 million results++). And let me tell you it take that SINGLE page (which has absolutely 0 backlinks) 2 days to ranked #1 .... and her brother if you searched "1000 likes facebook" also show similar result (though not better then the sister) How ?!? and Why ?!? , i dont understand this at all.... my domain does not contain any keyword, they uses the same engine and yet that lone pages which have absolutely no backlink ranked so well on a very competitive keyword, while my Target Keyword ranked poorly.... And what is even more bizzare? "Bikin website murah" might not rank good, but "bikin website" ranked better x_x ... arghh i dont get it... why my site ranked poorly on easy keywords and ranked high on difficult keywords :(( .... Why I am not smiling because those easy keyword is actually my primary keywords 😞
Competitive Research | | IKT0 -
Anyone have experience with "Link Research Tools" ?
I'm looking into Linkresearchtools.com for competitive backlink analysis. Already have SEOmoz (obviously) and Majestic. Anyone have any experience with the toolset? If so, what does it do well, what do you like, and where does it fall down? Cheers
Competitive Research | | BedeFahey0 -
How do you perform competitive research for SEO?
What metrics tell you the most when you're looking at your competitors across the search landscape? PageRank/MozRank Inbound links Keyword rankings Alexa/QuantCast/etc. Pages indexed Something else entirely? What numbers speak volumes to you when you want to get an idea of how you benchmark against your competitors? And how do you communicate these results?
Competitive Research | | jcolman2