Plural versions of keywords
-
I am a Magician and optimising my site for local seo mainly.
I would imagine this will affect any local business but I woule like some input from the community on how to handle variations of the same keyword.
e.g I am a Magician and I am based in Hampshire
So I have created a page for Hampshire and from previous keyword research optimised it of Magician Hampshire.
However there are many more variations of the keyword.
e.g
Magicians Hampshire, Magicians in Hampshire, Hampshire Magician, Magician in Hampshire, Close up Magicians in Hampshire, Hampshire Magicians, Magicians near Hampshire, Local Hampshire Magicians.
The list goes on but I can not find an answer on wether I should have a separate page/blog post for each of these keywords or include them in the same page.
If I include them in the same page how to not make it spammy
I am sure this is the same for electricians, dentists, hairdressers etc so am hoping there is a common answer to a problem that has been puzzling me for a long time
Many Thanks
-
Thanks all for your great responses, I have got some reading to do and Marcus I have implemented a few of your suggestions and will monitor its success!
Thanks again
Roger
-
Marcus and Peter both gave you great answers. The only thing I can think of that I would add to this would be make sure that when you use Google Webmaster tools you select the country you wish to geo-target. in addition be sure to add your site as www. and non-www. when adding to Google webmaster tools and select the choice you have picked with the 301 redirect your chosen URL
when choosing keywords diverse supply figure out that magic and magician and tricks along with other words that are going to be in bold if you are searching for similar words in Google will keep you from keyword stuffing.
Add quality content with video and images along with at least 1000 words per page to make it so people actually want to be on your site.
Quantity of Structured Citations (IYPs, Data Aggregators)
I have had a tremendous amount of luck utilizing schema it will help you out immensely.
I would utilize this tool if you are using WordPress you can download a plug-in if you're using something else you can simply create the schema inside this site and pasted in to your code.
utilize the knowledge found in this URL
http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
do not forget to utilize Google places as well as Google + they're one and the same now
http://searchengineland.com/13-semantic-markup-tips-for-2013-a-local-seo-checklist-143708
Yoast local SEO for WordPress has been very helpful as well. Creating a
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-use-schema-markup-for-local-seo/
http://www.microdatagenerator.com/local-business-schema/
sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi Roger
I don't think you should pay too much attention to optimising for plural versions of keywords or the sort of variations you list.
For localised SEO the number of pages targeted at a set of keywords will be smaller anyway, so search engines will have less to pick from, meaning that they will spread their net wider to provide a set of results that are relevant for the search entered.
Also, these days, search engines are sophisticated enough to understand the variations largely mean the same thing. The focus of Google when returning their search results is increasingly to understand the searcher's intent, i.e. what the person is looking for and answer their query accordingly.
Google also includes personalisation in its search results, so these days it's likely that someone typing "magician for parties" for example who lives in say, Southampton, will see a set of search results which will include magicians local to them in the Southampton area or nearby.
Google's personalisation of search results is defined through a range of criteria including the IP address of Internet connection where the search is entered, hence Google interprets that if you are searching "magician for parties" then it is your intent that you are looking for a magician who is local to you.
Personalisation may even work for the single word search "magician" but in that case the search results are likely to also contain results from pages from Wikipedia and the Magic Circle. I tried it for where I live in Bournemouth and I get exactly that type of mix of results.
I hope that helps,
Peter -
Hey Roger
This is a fairly common question and as you point out there are various ways that people search for a magician in Hampshire:
- Magicians Hampshire
- Magicians in Hampshire
- Hampshire Magician
- Magician in Hampshire
- Close up Magicians in Hampshire
- Hampshire Magicians
- Magicians near Hampshire
- Local Hampshire Magicians.
Now, it is true that you want the keywords that people use to search on your site but that should never be at the expense of writing good readable English.
So, first up we don't want a separate page for terms that have the same ultimate meaning:
Home Page
- Magicians Hampshire
- Magicians in Hampshire
- Hampshire Magician
- Magician in Hampshire
- Hampshire Magicians
- Magicians near Hampshire
- Local Hampshire Magicians.
Keywords that need their own pages
- Close Up Magician
- Table Magician
- Wedding Magician
Localisation
It is important to consider localisation and know that Google understands the difference between a keyword and a location. They know you are a magician and they know you are in Hampshire. So, you do want to mention this but don't go crazy. Simply, having well optimised page titles and using the location and service where natural should be enough.
Local SEO
Think about local SEO. Get citations from important business sites (Yell, Thompson etc), get citations from any business sources relevant to your location and get listings in any industry specific databases. If these come with links or just mentions of name, address and phone number - it all helps.
Keyword Targeting
You are going after all keywords in your homepage title and then have service pages as well so it may make sense to be a little more structured. Start with the high level keywords like simply magician and then break it down to the categories of magic for your service pages.
Some page titles as an example:
Home:
Roger Lapin - Magician for Hire in HampshireServices:
Close Up Magician in Hampshire | Roger Laplin
Table Magician in Hampshire | Roger Laplin
etcI would likely expand upon the scope of these titles some with mentions of corporate, private etc but the point here is to create a heirarchy to organise your keyword targeting and to get the important elements in the keywords:
<keyword><location><brand></brand></location></keyword>
Note
Everything we are seeing in Search indicates Google is trying to understand the true meaning behind the page and keywords, whilst still important, should not be forced into the page copy just to tick some SEO box. You have a local focus as well so research local SEO, optimise your pages well but don't do anything that reads badly or looks natural and you should start to see some success.
Hope that helps
MarcusP.S. worth a read: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
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
-
Rewriting content dilemma? should i include keywords ?
hi, i am rewriting content since it had 300 words , lower than top 10s i did some keywords research, on ahrefs, moz, keywordtool . io, semrush. and there are lot of variations like, main keyword is (ios 12) has variations like (ios 12 download), (ios 12 install), (ios 12 not supported) and so on, people have been searching all these terms with ios 12, it feels like if my page talks about all these variations. i have more chances to rank. does it make any sense?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Spammy keywords in our sub-domain but no penalty?
Hi, We have cigarettes and viagra as keywords in our sub-domain where our clients can post their business content. We have decent number of impressions and clicks for these related keywords. I have seen that these two words, especially "viagra" is most spammed. So are these hurting us? We dropped post Penguin update. Any correlation? Do you think that these keywords penalise us? We don't have messages or suggestion from Google Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
A good experiment to test keyword/vertical difficulty?
I'm trying to rank a brand new client site but getting nowhere for our main keyword/s - this after 6 months. We have built lots of good links and literally tried everything to fix this. What's a good way for me to test the keywords on a different page / domain to be certain the problem isn't with the vertical/keyword? I'd love to have some advice on this vs. how to fix the problem, which I've asked about here before. I'm assuming buying and trying to rank a new domain is a bad idea since sandboxing etc. could make it very difficult. Perhaps sending some links to a Tumblr page that's optimized for the main keyword or something similar? Would love to hear some suggestions - thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
Title Tags & Keyword Order
Hi I've read various articles on this - some saying it's still important to have the keyword at the beginning of the title and some saying it's not a big factor anymore? Does anyone have an opinion on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Keyword Targeting / Cannibalisation
Hi Guys We're about to launch a very large website for a flooring company and would like to find out more about _key word _cannibalisation - to put my mind at rest. I know Rand posted a Whiteboard Friday early last year about this topic and mentioned using part of the same keyword was ok to use. All our keywords are specifically geared for "user intent" meaning each keyword has relevance and the content to back up the keyword. We've ensured the keywords are located within each url, placed at the start of the page title, h1 etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GaryVictory1 -
Keyword Phrases - Can You Break Them Up?
Can you break up a search query across a sentence and have Google still recognize which query you are targeting? Let's say I'm trying to rank a page for the phrase "best haircuts calgary". Is Google's algorithm advanced enough to look at page title "Best Haircuts - Where To Get Them In Calgary" and know it's targeting the query "best haircuts calgary"? If it can't do this right now, I could see it advancing to this at some point in the future, which would then change the game quite a bit in terms of how creative you can get creating pages for queries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Different TITLE for the same page appear for different keywords
Hi there Can anyone advice please on this funny/strange issue I have title on home page. When I type some of keywords the homepage appears in SERP with shortcut TITLE (just one keyword there). But when I type company name I have full TITLE. Could anybody advice please what can be a problem and how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fleetway0 -
Do pages with irrelevant keywords hurt the domain overall for ranking for relevant keywords?
I have been doing SEO for the University I work at. We are optimizing our degree pages on a page-by-page basis. So hypothetically we have a page optimized for "online accounting degree" and another for "online marketing degree", etc. Although our focus is on specific page optimization, we hope the by-product is that the whole domain will start to rank better for "online degree". First of all, is this a reasonable expectation? Second, if this IS the case, will pages full of irrelevant keywords hurt the overall strategy? For example, our registrar and financial aid PDFs that are full of legal/financial mumbo-jumbo. Are these lowering our keyword density of relevant keywords across the domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SNHU0