Setting Up a Keyword Matrix

[Kingalan1]

Greetings MOZ community!!

My real estate web site contains about 500 pages with perhaps 70 pages targeting low volume, somewhat valuable but not very competitive keywords. Three to four URLs target very competitive terms.

The following  terms are among the most valuable:

New York City office space,
New York office space,
Manhattan office space,
NYC office space

Such variants as:

Office space in New York City,
Office space in New York,
Office space in Manhattan,
Office space in NYC
ETCETERA convert really well

How would I match different terms to different URLs?

For example I have just re-written the following two critical URLs:

www.nyc-officespace-leader.com (home page)
http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/office-space (product page)

Would it make sense to use "Manhattan office space" and variants on the home page while excluding "New York City office space" variants? At the same time I would use "New York City office space" variants on the "office-space" product page while excluding all mention of "Manhattan office space". Is this logical and does it conform to SEO best practices?

For the "NYC office space" terms I would add them to http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings. This URL has almost no text but a strong potential to rent because of a high number of incoming internal links.

Is this approach sensible?

In general what measures should I take to prevent URLs from competing for the same keywords?

Also, is there a software package or tools that I can use to come up with keyword variants?

As a non SEO professional, can I create my own keyword matrix or is this really in the realm of a professional SEO consultant?

Thanks, Alan

[Cyrus-Shepard]

My opinion is that the URLs are less important than the actual content on the page, including title tags, headlines, body text, etc.

Unfortunately, there's no way to manually determine when you've crossed the line of "near-duplicate" content, so it's best to make each content experience serve a unique experience targeted towards a specific purpose.

[Kingalan1]

Hi Cyrus:

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.

How different must the URLs be?  Our site covers commercial real estate rentals in New York City with the focus being on office space.

The menus on the site contain categories like commercial space, with pages dedicated to office, loft, retail, showroom space, etcetera.

It would be difficult to exclude our primary product (office space) from our commercial space menu just because it is also discussed on the home page.

Is there anyway that I can objectively determine if I am crossing some kind of red line where content on one page overlaps with other pages?  Last thing I want to do is trigger a Panda update.

Thanks, Alan

[Cyrus-Shepard]

This is a tough question to answer because each page should serve a unique and important purpose for your visitor, and these examples seem like they are trying to cover the same topic using different keywords.

While this approach is somewhat common, when your variations don't "vary" too much, it becomes fodder for Google's Panda algorithm, which penalizes sites with content that repeat the same topic over and over again with minor variations.

On the other hand, if your pages really do serve a unique purpose, then the situation you described is perfectly acceptable. I suspect Google considers "New York City" and "Manhattan" as two distinct, but closely related entities. It's tough to know in advance how different pages optimized for these terms will interplay with each other, but you may have to do some experimenting to find out.

Keep us updated on your progress. Best of luck!

[Kingalan1]

Thanks for your feedback.

Perhaps the scope of this question is to wide. If that is the case, do you have any suggestions on the procedures I should follow to develop a keyword matrix?

Thanks, Alan

[WhoWuddaThunk]

It's tough to answer your question simply because I don't know your sites overall strategy.  What keywords are you targeting, and how are you targeting them currently type information.  This isn't something I'd ask you to do in a public setting like this forum

My personal suggestion would be to find a SEO Mentor.  Someone you can ask questions of to learn yourself, but not directly hire.  With the potential partnerships your site offers it would be reasonable for someone to take you under their wing in hopes of generating clients through you.