How would you target three synonymous phrases for the same product?
-
I have a site that I'm working on that sells waste oil heaters, and I'm beginning to run into an issue. As one would assume, our primary keyword phrase is "waste oil heaters" for which we're doing rather well. The issue is that there are two other phrases that are directly synonymous to our primary term that users are actively searching for (i.e. the product can accurate be called three different things). Phrases are listed below w/ phrase match search volumes
"waste oil heater" - 6600
"waste oil burner" - 2400
"waste oil furnace" - 1900
I'm not one who likes to engage in trying to "trick" anything, so I'm fairly opposed to listing all three of these in the title tag or something similar. This is being done by our competitors, but only one outranks us as this point for the primary phrase.
My initial thoughts are that we should be targeting our home page and category page for "waste oil heater(s)", and then lightly pepper our content with the use of these synonyms. Then from there we can focus on other term variations w/ our blog posts and try to vary up the anchor text coming into the site when we launch link building.
What do you guys think? Have you guys been a situation like this with three phrases describing the same product? I appreciate any feedback or advice.
Thanks guys!
-
If you ask me.... Waste Oil Heater is going to be used by most people for a small portable device.... Waste Oil Furnace is a larger device used to heat a structure.... Waste Oil Burner is a component part of a Waste Oil Furnace.
You could make unique photos, instructions, articles and diagrams for each. Some people will use these terms interchangeably but I view them as distinct.
-
We are already developing a content strategy. That isn't the issue. We know the types of content that resonate with our audience and plan on doing that. The issue is more that we're trying to determine how to target synonyms across the domain and I'm looking for feedback from folks who may have had a similar situation. Trust me, I'm not looking for some magic bullet, "one-page-fix-all" solution. If you'd read my question you would see that. Thanks.
-
What you need is a content strategy for your website. One post and one set of titles for a word just does cut it. You need to write some valuable content on a regular basis. In some of your articles mention "waste oil burner" and in others mention your primary and "waste oil furnace". As long as your anchor text and menu's keep your primary keyword you should not lose rank on your primary. Be creative and maybe come up with topics such as:
- Use A Waste Oil Furnace to Generate Free Heat Through Recycling
- Safely Create A Homemade Waste Oil Burner
etc etc. By producing content for both the users and the search bot your website can only grow in value and ranking.
-
Hi Jesse,
Depends a bit on the competition and where you are already for those phrases but if you are pretty well placed then I would be inclined to approach it as you describe. Google highlights all three words when searching so they know there is a relationship there anyway. Seems to me that the heater/burner results are very similar, the furnace ones a bit different so maybe it is worth considering a title like 'waste oil heaters & furnaces' if it makes sense. Beyond that, if there are potentially small conceptual differences between the words then those sound like good fodder for blog posts which should help.
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
-
Should i stop non targeted countries from viewing my site to stop pogo sticking?
i recently Learned that if someone clicks on your site and goes back within a few seconds or maybe a minute and then goes to the next search result that tells Google that previous website was not so good In order to prevent that is it OK to block non-targeted countries from looking at my site that could stop user engagement a little bit I mean is it worth it what do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Duplicate content on product pages
Hi, We are considering the impact when you want to deliver content directly on the product pages. If the products were manufactured in a specific way and its the same process across 100 other products you might want to tell your readers about it. If you were to believe the product page was the best place to deliver this information for your readers then you could potentially be creating mass content duplication. Especially as the storytelling of the product could equate to 60% of the page content this could really flag as duplication. Our options would appear to be:1. Instead add the content as a link on each product page to one centralised URL and risk taking users away from the product page (not going to help with conversion rate or designers plans)2. Put the content behind some javascript which requires interaction hopefully deterring the search engine from crawling the content (doesn't fit the designers plans & users have to interact which is a big ask)3. Assign one product as a canonical and risk the other products not appearing in search for relevant searches4. Leave the copy as crawlable and risk being marked down or de-indexed for duplicated contentIts seems the search engines do not offer a way for us to serve this great content to our readers with out being at risk of going against guidelines or the search engines not being able to crawl it.How would you suggest a site should go about this for optimal results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux2 -
Shall I change duplicated product descriptions if I am top ranking result and was first to publish it?
about 20% of total 500 products in our shop have a manufacturer product description, which appears repeatedly on maybe 10 other sites and also on ebay and amazon. Issue is just with our own brand. We have another brand website where we publish the same product descriptions as well (google knows that we own both sites). The product description was first published on shop website before anywhere else and we are ranking number one for the product despite quite strong competition and we outrank our brand website as well. Which of the following options would you opt for? keeping the description and just adding some unique content replacing the complete product description by a new one
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Geo-targeting Content Based On IP address?
What are the benefits / disadvantages of geo-targeting content based on IP address. A client is interested in serving up different content on their homepage based on what area the user is coming from. This seems like an SEO nightmare to me as search engine spiders could potentially see different content depending on when they visit. Is there a best practices here? Or is it looked down upon in regards to SEO? Any information would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Geo targeting - same language, different countries
We are in serps in US google, but not in the UK, Australia. Also we have non-english translations of the website - these options works very well. Are there any logic options to make uk.domain.com? We can add United Kingdom in the description and texts. Can this do though in www.google.co.uk ? Same with AU. Website content fits all countries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Will an RSS feed help new product get indexed? How to create one for product?
Hi I've read that creating an RSS feed for one of our ecommerce sites will help the products get indexed faster. Currently it takes google 4-5 days to index our new products, we want to speed that up. Will an RSS feed of the new products we have help? How do you create an RSS feed for this? Our blog gets indexed within minutes, but our main website, 4 days. Help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Did adding product videos cause my products to lose #1 position?
I work on an e-commerce site and for many of the products we sell, we rank #1 for "product name + item number" related searches. We decided to add product videos to some of our products in the hopes of getting an additional listing in the SERP's (regular listing + video listing in universal video results) Instead.. What we've noticed is that sometimes we are not getting 2 listings but just a regular listing with a video thumbnail that ranks somewhere on the middle of the first page. The video thumbnail is great.. but I'd rather the #1 position. I don't think Google likes to show video results as the #1 position for obvious product searches. What do you think? Did we lose our #1 position because of adding the videos to our product pages? Any advice or similar experiences? ~~ Additional information: On some of those queries, Google had decided to ignore our video and we have maintained our #1 ranking. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebstaurantStore.com0 -
Get-targeted homepage for users vs crawlers
Hello there! This is my first post here on SEOmoz. I'll get right into it then... My website is housingblock.com, and the homepage runs entirely off of geo-targeting the user's IP address to display the most relevant results immediately to them. Can potentially save them a search or three. That works great. However, when crawlers frequent the site, they are obviously being geo-targeted for their IP address, too. Google has come to the site via several different IP addresses, resulting in several different locations being displayed for it on the homepage (Mountain View, CA or Clearwater, MI are a couple). Now, this poses an issue because I'm worried that crawlers will not be able to properly index the homepage because the location, and ultimately all the content, keeps changing. And/or, we will be indexed for a specific location when we are in fact a national website (I do not want to have my homepage indexed/ranked under Mountain View, CA, or even worse, Clearwater, MI [no offence to any Clearwaterians out there]). Of course, my initial instinct is to create a separate landing page for the crawlers, but for obvious reasons, I am not going to do that (I did at one point, but quickly reverted back because I figured that was definitely not the route to go, long-term). Any ideas on the best way to approach this, while maintaining the geo-targeted approach for my users? I mean, isn't that what we're supposed to do? Give our users the most relevant content in the least amount of time? Seems that in doing so, I am improperly ranking my website in the eyes of the search engines. Thanks everybody! Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | THB0