Aiming for long tails on a long piece of content, without over-optimisation and attracting Panda...
-
Hi,
I'm currently in the process of optimising a new ecommerce site with tons of content.
We're really well-researching our information and are aiming for one page a week, so each page (such as category pages etc) is getting 5-7 days of research before the content is written, so that we know our info is correct and that more than enough content is available, rather than a simple 300-500 word article.
One category page in particular has the potential for maybe 4,000-6,000 words, or even more (I don't want to hit that, as it's not needed, but I'd like to go into enough detail about enough things to bring us up on top as the market leader) - Our biggest competitor is currently hitting around 2,500 words on the category page for their site and they're ranking for a lot of long tails. (Of course they're also getting a lot of links too!)
To put it simply, we have a better quality product and a range of options (we're one of the first [if not the first] in the UK to have several options for this product where you have the choice of going for the cheap option, or going for higher priced and better quality options etc), whereas our main competitor simply has one stand alone product. By default this gives us much more to work with regarding potential content.While building this site we haven't bothered to consider 'keyword density', as we're going for as white-a-hat as possible, but when it comes to long tails I'm finding that I may have to consider it for this page at least.
We have a few dozen long tails such as 'Where does X come from', 'Why is X so expensive', 'What is the difference between X and X' etc - You know the kind of keywords.
To help specifically with the long tails we've opted to include a FAQ section to that category page, but it seems that by doing this I have accidentally gone up to ~3% density on the 'X', which I suppose isn't too bad, but at the same time that one keyword has already made ~30 appearances in the content - and all we have done so far is the FAQ section.
I'm going through now and rewording it so that it's less 'keywordy' (although there does seem to be a limit to the number of times to can say 'it' before that starts to sound odd..), but was just wondering how you manage to write a long and detailed piece of content that is all specifically about one thing, without having to use that one keyword too many times, while also hitting plenty of long tails at the same time? -
Definitely don't cut yourself short. If it takes 15k words to properly describe something then that is what it takes. It sounds to me that you have a good handle on what you are doing. Keep it natural and all will be well. Good luck!
-
Thanks Billy,
I'll try wording it without so many keywords then and keep an eye on how the rankings for different long tails go.
Don't get me wrong - I definitely understand quality over quantity (the point of our products themselves is quality over quantity - a premium above what you can get elsewhere), there's just so much to say that this requires a kind of 'quantity for quality' approach, if you know what I mean. It'd be very easy to write 2,000 words of quality and useful content for this specific product and still have a boatload of stuff left unsaid which could persuade the visitor to convert. -
You never 'have' to use the keyword at all, actually. Simply make sure you are writing about it and chances are you will use it exactly how many times you should. It isn't the keywords, or more specifically it isn't mainly the keywords. It is the surrounding text. Are you describing your keyword? Are you staying relevant and on topic? And as far as your content volume I would suggest never write content for the sake of having content. If the page requires 4k words then write 4k words. If it requires 1k then write 1k. Quality over Quantity. I promise.
Cheers.
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
-
Optimising page for branded search terms
Hi, new to keyword research and have a question on branded search terms. I'm optimising the product pages of a manufacturer's site and assume that the primary keyword for each product page (and therefore the H1 header) should be a detailed product name e.g.'Aqua Power wet and dry cordless vacuum cleaner'. Is it good practise to add the manufacturer's name to the beginning of a product title? I can't determine this by looking at search volume or competition for the two versions of the keyphrase as they are too low to get stats in both cases. Previous SEOs have set up the product titles on my pages without including the brand name but this seems to me to be loosing out on the opportunity to rank for both '[brand name] [detailed product name]' and '[detailed product name]' with the one keyphrase. On the other hand, this site only sells products from one manufacturer so maybe it looks fussy to include the brand name on every product title. I would of course add the manufacturer name to the page title e.g.'Aqua Power wet and dry cordless vacuum cleaner | cordless vacuum cleaner | [brand name]' so Google would be able to associate a brand with the product even if I didn't include it in my primary keyword. Thanks for any guidance on this!
Keyword Research | | Alli70 -
Long tail keyword
Hi, What the the most useful long tail keyword tools you use for your adwords? Thanks for any insight.
Keyword Research | | LauraHT0 -
Internal Linking inside page content
Hi! Actually, i have been getting down after i fix internal links on each page. What i have done is linked keywords to the concern pages from other pages on same website. But i see the result going down in the google organic list. is this bad practice? example: http://www.nortekk.no/vi-utforer/blikkenslager-15/ Keyword : blikkenslager 1. Internal link, i doubt on this. May be it is not good. please confirm and help me 2. Main keyword usage in document. Must i reduce it? Thank you in advance Vels
Keyword Research | | Webworld_Norway0 -
Question about ranking for long tail keywords
So I am looking at some long tail keywords for my web design company, for example: "website development and design company" The top results are websites that are not optimized for that specific keyword but about "web design & development" in general. The top ranking sites also have quite high PA with lots of links. If I were to create a page specifically about that term would it be fairly easy to rank for since the top ranking pages are not optimized for that keyword?
Keyword Research | | WebAdvancedUK0 -
Long tail traffic only to category, should we make the title keyword rich?
Hello, Some of my client's internal categories only rank for long tail terms. Should we make the title keyword rich or should we stick to one very small keyword phrase and use that as the title. Also, is there any reason to write a full 500 words for category descriptions on weak, internal categories(PA 15)? Thanks
Keyword Research | | BobGW0 -
Is there a pro tool or google service that I can use to see which sites rank for certain terms? Without having to first identify the url's?
For example I want to see the top 20 sites in order of ranking for top keywords in my industry. Without having to know in advance the url's.
Keyword Research | | CURT-208170 -
How long till you rank for your domain name?
Hi everybody! Say you have a domain like stocktips.com - how long would you estimate it'll take to rank for it's name? Thank you, Alex
Keyword Research | | pwpaneuro0 -
Invisible Long Tail Keywords
I've been doing some research on SEOmoz and have seen some posts relating to invisible long tail keywords. I have a couple of questions relating to this: Am I correct to understand that an invisible long tail keyword won't show any search in a tool like the Google Keyword Tool? If not, how do you define it? If an invisible long tail keyword has almost no search (or search that can be proven by an SEO researcher), how can you be confident that it will produce results?
Keyword Research | | EricVallee341