Migrating to New site keywords question
-
We are converting an old static html ecommerce site to a new platform. The old site has excellent ranking for some of the products.
In order to maintain our ranking we will implement 301 redirects from old to new pages (as the urls will change to SEF).
I am using Googles Keyword tool (in adwords) and entering each page url of the old site (there are hundreds, I'm doing the top 50 in traffic) and generating a set of keywords, then sorting each list by global searches.
For each page, Google's Keyword Tool is giving me hundreds of keywords, but in meta tags there should be no more than 15, so I need a method to choose the keywords on the new page.
Question: in the new meta tags should we emphasize the most common keywords (as defined by most global searches) or the least common keywords?
I would hate to lose the good ranking for the least common (long tail) keywords.
-
How about focusing on the keywords and products that make you money?
My husband sells kits for model warships that shoot and sink each other. A high-volume keyword would be battleship, but that doesn't get us any sales. A low volume keyword would be uss iowa 1:144 scale turret cover, but that's a low-priced item that's not going to help us too much. For us, a different keyword makes much more sense.
-
Your original question asked what keywords to put in your META tags... That technique may have worked years ago, but META tags are worthless these days. So I think people were starting at square one to illustrate this fact.
Here's an idea - go to your competitors sites and look at their META tags (if they are silly enough to use them.) This will give you an idea what keywords (low or high competition/priority) they find important enough to target. Then you can go after those. (But don't put them in your METAs...)
And now a pointer for forum communications - try not to get so defensive. It's an ugly color and tonality never conveys well on internet forums.
Good luck!
-
Take your pick.
When you put these pages on the web they might be there for years so the small amount of time needed to make a decision can payback many times over with increased traffic and increased conversions.
I am trying to advice on best practices to maximize your return, not give you quick and easy.
-
I'm sorry I'm not making you feel helpful. You have been helpful.
-
Ok, got that and I agree that customer feedback and knowledgeable sales people are great reviewers of keywords and they are one of the primary sources we are using.
We have thousands of skus however and thus a we have a business need that the process be automated to whatever extent is possible.
We can ignore the Google Keyword tool results entirely - that's an option and perhaps a rationale one. But the Keyword tool is based on Google's own indices and therefore I think is a great source of keywords that have not appeared on our lists by other means. It also shows total searches and competition for those keywords so you can get a sense of what your competition is doing and how many pages already have those keywords pointed at them.
All that said, he question remains whether the most common or least common are more important to emphasize for SEO purposes.
-
whether most common or least common would be better for SEO
I use a lot more thought than picking the most common or the least. I consider the ones that best represent my product, the ones that I think people are searching for and the ones that I think will elicit clicks.
I also consider the power of my site and how I think it will rank against competitors for those specific keywords.
The google keyword tool is good for prospecting but when you combine it with a little knowledge of people, search engines, the power of your site, and your competitors you can get better performance.
-
I thumbed you down ssaltman--your replies aren't making me feel very helpful.
-
EGOL,
I have a very specific question regarding keywords generated by the Google Keyword tool - whether most common or least common would be better for SEO.
Your royal "we" makes you sound silly, but I'm figuring you hang around here because you know something about SEO.
If you google me, you'll see that I've actually built and sold companies before. I know something about SEO but I'm not arrogant enough to make assumptions.
My question was pretty specific. If you have an answer or comment on the question, I'd love to hear it.
-
We are telling you that we think you will make a lot more money with more knowledge.
We can't teach you the full scope of SEO in a forum. And we don't want to give specific advice on a site when we are guessing.
So, you can improve your knowledge or get assistance and probably make a lot more money. Or you can be satisfied with making less money.
I hope that this isn't a client site.
-
I'm not sure why folks seem to think I am completely new to this. We already captured all the incoming keywords and are implementing content and url nomenclature strategies around those.
Was just wondering if we should be using most common or least common google-generated keywords to boost SEO.
The rationale of using long-tail keywords with higher likely CTR vs. common keywords with lower CTR is compelling and I was trying to phrase to question to get feedback.
So far: question: 1, answers: 0
-
To line your new site up with the existing baseline of the old site, I'd be looking more at your stats than at the keyword tool. Go to your analytics and look to see which keywords were bringing you in the most traffic for each landing page and focus on those.
-
Well, let's take the question more generally then and ask:
which keywords should be emphasized in the content and the meta information: most common or least common?
-
Uh....ok
-
SSaltman,
If you're speaking specifically populating the keyword meta tag, you don't have to worry about it.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/meta-keywords-should-we-use-them-or-not
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/
-
You are rebuilding a site and that is a great time to kick your SEO up a notch and make a lot more money. That is how it should be done.
You seem to be putting a lot of work into keywords and meta tags but I am not sure that you are focusing on the right things.
Have you considered spending a nice block of time improving your knowledge of SEO before making this move or hiring a pro to map out the changes that will kick the performance up nicely?
That's what I would do. I often get advice from other SEOs before making big moves. It pays.
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
-
Site redesign makes Moz Site Crawl go haywire
I work for an agency. Recently, one of our clients decided to do a complete site redesign without giving us notice. Shortly after this happened, Moz Site Crawl reported a massive spike of issues, including but not limited to 4xx errors. However, in the weeks that followed, it seemed these 4xx errors would disappear and then a large number of new ones would appear afterward, which makes me think they're phantom errors (and looking at the referring URLs, I suspect as much because I can't find the offending URLs). Is there any reason why this would happen? Like, something wrong with the sitemap or robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | YYSeanBrady1 -
If you are organizing the site structure for an ecommerce site, how would you do it?
Should you use not use slashes and use all dashes or use just a few slashes and the rest with dashes? For example, domain.com/category/brand/product-color-etc OR domain.com/anythinghere-color-dimensions-etc Which structure would you rather go for and why?
Technical SEO | | Zookeeper0 -
Keyword targeting & differentiation between similar keywords
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around keyword targeting when two keywords are very similar. Here's my dilemma, lets just I sell ACE brand Widgets I'm doing well with “ACE Widgets” queries but not “ACE” How do I fix this since “ACE” is already all throughout the results page & supposedly anchor text is playing a less and less significant role in link relevancy so just getting links with “ACE” as the anchor text wouldn't really help (I wouldn't think) Just a little confused. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Will SEO Moz index our keywords if the site is ALL https?
We have a site coming into beta next week. Playing around with SEO Moz, I had trouble getting the keywords to rank at all. Was this because the site is entirely https? If yes, what else can SEO Moz NOT do if the site is all https? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
I am Posting an article on my site and another site has asked to use the same article - Is this a duplicate content issue with google if i am the creator of the content and will it penalize our sites - or one more than the other??
I operate an ecommerce site for outdoor gear and was invited to guest post on a popular blog (not my site) for a trip i had been on. I wrote the aritcle for them and i also will post this same article on my website. Is this a dup content problem with google? and or the other site? Any Help. Also if i wanted to post this same article to 1 or 2 other blogs as long as they link back to me as the author of the article
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Question about an older more obsolete site
I have a website that I don't use much anymore but it ranks on the first page for one of my main keywords. I am using another few websites in different niches right now that are doing better and are more functional. It may cost around 1,300 or so to get the website that I don't use anymore, to look and function in the new ways of the internet. Would you suggest that I: Do a site redesign (which is more difficult because to make the site do what I want it needs to be out of a wordpress theme) or 301 redirect the site to another one of my sites? Would it make sense to do a 301? The domain is 5 years old but doesn't bring in any leads anymore because it would take a redesign for that to happen. How can I still benefit from the SEO that I have done on that site? Thanks and sorry if this message is hard to follow. If I need to clear anything up please let me know.
Technical SEO | | blake-766240 -
Site Architecture Trade Off
Hi All I'm looking for some feedback regarding a site architecture issue I'm having with a client. They are about to enter a re-design and as such we're restructuring the site URLs and amending/ adding pages. At the moment they have ranked well off the back of original PPC landing pages that were added onto the site, such as www.company.com/service1, www.company.com/service2, etc The developer, from a developer point of view wished to create a logical site architecture with multiple levels of directories etc. I've suggested this probably isn't the best way to go, especially as the site isn't that large (200-300 pages) and that the key pages we're looking to rank should be as high up the architecture as we can make them, and that this amendment could hurt their current high rankings. It looks like the trade off may be that the client is willing to let some pages be restructured so for example, www.company.com/category/sub-category/service would be www.company.com/service. However, although from a page basis this might be a solution, is there a drawback to having this in place for only a few pages rather than sitewide? I'm just wondering if these pages might stick out like a sore thumb to Google.
Technical SEO | | PerchDigital1 -
Keyword domains
Hi everyone. Two questions regarding keyword domains (e.g. "widgets.com") If we have to choose a domain with an extra word, does it make a difference to have the added word before or after? E.g. "my-widgets.com" vs "widgets-now.com" Does it make a difference if the extra word is a generic vs a 'real' word? E.g. "my-widgets.com" vs "japanese-widgets.com" Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Technical SEO | | hectorpn0