Which keyword for title
-
I'm trying to figure out what to use for my title text. It's for a structural steel fabrication company. Adwords has the average monthly searches for "structural steel" and "steel fabrication" identical at 5,400. It has "structural steel fabrication" at 390 which I get that since its longer and a little more specific will have less searches. My question is if I make the title "structural steel fabrication" does google just see it as 1 big keyword or will it rank for "structural steel" and/or "steel fabrication"? What would any of you go with here? All 3 keyword strings make sense for the person seeing the title.
Thanks for any advice you can give,
Clay
-
Hi Clay,
Welcome to Moz! Have you checked out the Beginner's Guide to SEO as well as our other guides at http://moz.com/learn/seo? I totally understand if you've instead been enjoying the weather! I see you're in AG/SLO. I grew up in Santa Maria, and really am only now (after relocating to Seattle) appreciating the weather we had there in the winter.
-
Could you give a little more background about how the SEs would view that as just one keyword? I'm looking at a search for SEO in Google right now, and on the front page there are results including one with SEO Training in the title tag, yet it's showing up on the first page for SEO by itself.
For the construction example, the number of searches isn't necessarily the number of visits to a page. On my site, I show up fairly low for just "warship" but fairly high for "model warship combat". Way more people search for "warship", but I'm so far down in the results for that keyword that I get more visits from "model warship combat" even though there's far less search volume. Like you said, the longer-tail keywords are often the ones that do convert better.
-
Thanks for the response Alex. I'm really starting to get a grasp on this stuff. Appreciate it!
-
Thanks a lot Chris! That really helps me out. Being a developer who's boss told him to "figure out SEO" this stuff gets pretty confusing sometimes. I appreciate it.
-
As mentioned above just setting the title to the most popular keyword won't guarantee you rank for that keyword. You're better off creating a page that uses and supports both keywords, or target a good keyword for your brand. Follow up by creating sub pages or sub content that support the 2 keywords you've mentioned. The goal isn't to just use the keyword in a few places, it's to create a whole map of content that supports a single keyword.
-
Clay,
As far as the words used in the title, those that are closest together and closest to the beginning of title will be given more weight but there is no clear delineation of what's a keyword and what's not a keyword in the title. Rather, think of your title as a lens through which Google sees the rest of the words on your page.
When the copy on the page contains the same words in the same order as what's found in the title, such combinations will be seen by google as highly relevant to the same combination used in a search query. In your example, if your tile contains only "steel fabrication" and your page copy contains only "steel fabrication" then the page would be far more relevant to the "steel fabrication" search query than it would be to the "structural steel fabrication" search query.
If your title used "steel fabrication" towards the beginning and "structural" towards the end and you sprinkled the terms "structural" and "steel fabrication" throughout your page copy, the page would still be highly relevant to the search query "steel fabrication", while increasing in relevance to the "structural steel fabrication" query.
If your title began with "structural steel fabrication" and you used that combination of words throughout your copy, the page would probably become more relevant to that query than to "steel fabrication" but could possibly still rank for both.
That said, there is a fundamental difference between the concepts of "structural steel fabrication" and "structural steel " (and "steel fabrication" for that matter) and Google is recognizing that the way each is used in context gives big clues to the page concepts. Thus, more and more, Goolge knows that just because the words "steel fabrication" are used next to each other on a page, if structural is used in front of them, then the page may be considered irrelevant to "structural steel fabrication".
So, if your page is about "structural steel", use your copy to clearly this product or service. If the page is about "steel fabrication" use the page copy to clearly describe that service to your visitors. If the page is about "structural steel fabrication", be clear about that. Doing so will pay off more and more, as Google continues to get better at providing search results and as visitor expectations of landing pages get higher.
-
Search engines will see "Structural Steel Fabricator" as one keyword, not as all combinations of words therein.
When it comes to short vs long-tail keywords, the main question is about whether or not the loss of searches is made up for by specificity in regard to longer keywords. For example: let's say your business is home construction. In 1 day, 1,000 people search "construction" on Google, whereas 200 people search "home construction". While "construction" gets 5x the visits to your site, it's assumed that those who visit from searching "home construction" will be more likely interested in your service because they were more specific and therefore, your service is more tailored to their search.
Odds are that less people will generally search "home construction", but there's also less competition and the leads are more likely to become customers. So, I suggest comparing your conversion rates, the amount of visitors for both, and the competition for each keyword.
-
Hi Clay. Google will be able to parse your page meaning not only from the Title Text but also the semantic linking to and from your page, so "structural steel fabrication" should be a fine choice. Something that could help you test the efficacy of your title tags though would be to start up a small paid campaign (AdWords) around the company brand and then split test the various titles you come up with amongst people searching specifically for the company brand. Then you'll have data on which title tends to beat out the other from a CTR stand point.
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
-
How to find low difficulty keywords
how to find informative low difficulty keywords. how can I get content ideas? I have lots of content ideas but it's not good search volume on google. I have a kitchen-related affiliate website called https://gloryspy.com
Keyword Research | | MalikJan0 -
Can you ever compete with product keywords?
I am doing keyword research for a dental blog and wanted to get the forum's opinion about these SERP results: https://moz.com/explorer/keyword/serp-analysis?q=electric+toothbrushWondering if the Google algorithm will always favor something like Amazon since someone searching "electric toothbrush" probably doesn't want info -- they probably want to buy...right?
Keyword Research | | catbur2 -
Selecting keywords
hello, i am using google adwords search terms to find keywords, first of all is that a good practice? If it is then i have the below question: What is most important to take into consideration when thinking of a better keyword: a) impressions b) Most conversotions c) Both in a combination i want to import that keywords in moz pro to see search visibility is that the right way? Which keywords are the most important and how can i chase them? i have to mention here that my adwords account is from 2010 so the data are very much!! Please be specific in for answer thanks in advance
Keyword Research | | anavasis0 -
Price Comparison Website And Keywords
I run a price comparison website for a small niche at http://cdkeyprices.com I am targeting keywords for the specific products I am comparing the price/merchants on. On a typical page I would have a price column, product name, the merchant and a buy button. Buy button is affiliate linked to the merchant. The product name in the product column is the name from the actual website I am tracking. As such, my keyword was appearing sometimes up the 30 times. I've took it down some months ago but was wondering if this was a bad move. I was concerned Google would think I was stuffing the keyword. I've only just gotten into SEO the past few months so was not able to see any changes. Should i put the product column back up or would it be considered over optimization?
Keyword Research | | MrPenguin0 -
SeoMoz Keyword Tool
Hello All, Ive been using the SeoMoz Keyword tool but have a quick question. Im working on a newer site with a DA according to OSE of 35. Im combing through keywords to rank. Although competition is very high I have found a few holes. According to the Keyword tool in SeoMoz a few keywords Im looking at are roughly 50%. Would it be to difficult to rank for this type of term? Ive been using a combination of Google Trends, Adwords keyword tool, and ubersuggest, to try and see whats available. Does anyone use different tools? Thank you
Keyword Research | | TP_Marketing0 -
Keyword question
In my keywords should they include the city name or not? Example..... plastic surgery or plastic surgery Orlando I know the search engine knows what city i am in, if i search for plastic surgery and i live in Orlando, does it pull up world wide plastic surgery links first or local plastic surgery clinics? Thanks in advance. Daniel
Keyword Research | | dools0 -
Prioritizing Keywords
Hi Everyone, I've been using many of the articles to find out the best way to create a list of long tail keywords I wish to target. Anyway, I used Google AdWords Tool in order to find out how many Global/Local Searches per month, and the Keyword Difficulty Tool on this site in order to find the difficulty score. With these two metrics, I've compiled a good list, but I wanted to know how people prioritize keywords. I was thinking of creating a formula in excel in order to compare both the difficulty score and the amount of searches, but I wanted to know other people's advice and how they decided to prioritize the long tail keywords they compiled. I am still a bit of a newbie at this, so any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Keyword Research | | Seiyav0 -
Is the all in title technique helpful?
I watched a tutorial on lynda.com about keyword research. And they said to use the All In Tittle trick to see how many pages on google are optimized for that keyword - do you reccommend using that method as well? In google, you type allintitle:"key word phrase" and the results show how many page titles are optimized for that phrase. Should I use this technique as well when choosing keywords?
Keyword Research | | aircyclemegan1