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
-
Choosing the right keywords when the products are similar
What keywords should I choose if I have 3 similar products, only the value differs?
Keyword Research | | Voucherstore 0
It is recommended to use the same keyword, and change the value? Example: Product 1: $ 100 discount coupon
Keyword: $ 100 discount coupon Product 2: $ 75 discount coupon
Keyword:? Product 3: $ 50 discount coupon
Keyword:? Any advice? Thank you, Sergio K.0 -
What place does plural versions of keywords have in keyword research?
Working on doing a massive keyword research project for my sites, one of the things I am trying to figure out is if I should be including plural versions of keywords. For example, should you include yoga mat as well as yoga mats?
Keyword Research | | ShockoeCommerce0 -
How do I use Google Keyword in onsite seo?
Hello to all, I wanted to ask if I am doing this correctly. So I own a Bernese mountain dog website I used the google keyword research tools to view keyword ideas. I listed my results below. So my questions are: 1 - Bernese Mountain Dog Puppies (the keyword) blow away the other keywords. So when you are looking at your sites most popular keywords, do you make the most popular keyword your homepage? Because it gets the most link juice? Like would you build the homepage around the best keyword instead of branding - like the company name etc? Or does it matter? Basically just as long as you use it for one page? 2 - When you have keywords that have parts of other keywords, is it safe to use the longer keyword because it has parts of the other phrases? Such as Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale is a part of Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado. So if you use bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado, it will also hit the bernese mountain dog puppies for sale? ( without the In Colorado) What type of strategy would you use for this type of situation? 3- Lastly, and thank you for your time - I watched a video from a grey hat seo guy. He said to take a keyword or phrase like say Colorado home builders, create a page like example.com/Colorado-home-builders/ Then make you h1 tag - The Best Colorado Home Builders Add The Best Colorado home builders to your meta description and one more time in your h2 tag Then create a Bold, and italic The Best Colorado Home Builders in your unique content paragraphs. So my question is - is this grey hat and bad? Or the standard? I do not want to get hit for over optimizing. So just wanted to ask you opinion first. In the end, I truly thank you for taking the time to read my questions. I appreciate everyone's help and greatly appreciate your knowledge. So my results look like this | bernese mountain dog puppies | 590 | Low | $0.45 | 1% | |
Keyword Research | | Berner
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale | 90 | High | $0.42 | 9% | |
| bernese mountain dogs | 90 | Low | $0.37 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in colorado | 30 | Medium | $0.76 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog breeders in colorado | 20 | Medium | $0.32 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dogs colorado | 40 | Low | $0.08 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppy breeders | 10 |0 -
Longtail keyword definition seems fuzzy?
So we all know about longtail keyword vs. short tail. However, it seems that the definition is a bit inconsistant. Some people say longtail keywords are keywords that get very low amounts of traffic, others that they are key phrases with 2 or more words. And others add to this that they have high conversion rate but describe specific features, product, service, model # etc. In an ideal model I suppose all of these things would be true. As keyword length increases, traffic tends to decrease, keyword is more specific pointing at features, model#, specific product etc and therefore the conversion rate is a bit higher as well. However, the data isn't a perfect curve. I will see keywords that get 18,000 searches but have 4 words. And then I will see single word key phrases that get <10 -20 searches a month. What am I to consider these? Its like they fit half the criteria. Any comments on this would be helpful and appreciated. I suppose the real question I am after is - it seems like the real definition of a long tail keyword cant be any of the above traits of a long tail keyword. How do you really define a long tail keyword in all circumstances (without it being this subjective idealized definition based on a perfect model) and where would the keyword circumstances (lots of words but high traffic, and low traffic but 1 word) fall in the graph? Center?
Keyword Research | | eastco0 -
SEO beginner- How to decide what keyword to go after?
I started a website called Think and Grow Entrepreneur. I'm not sure where to start with Keywords and which ones to go after. Should I input the same keywords over and over my blog to rank in those or should I look at every post as a single entity and try to rank different keywords in each blog. Ideally I would like to rank for the keyword Entrepreneur, but there are already very powerful companies with the same keyword. How should I go about this situation? I appreciate any feedback. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | johnmoon60 -
Google Keyword Tool Category Selector
Has anyone developed any useful techniques for using the category selector in the GKT? Perhaps in conjunction with a site URL. Always looking for something better
Keyword Research | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Comprehensive Keyword Research Report?
I'd like to provide a keyword research report to a client, that includes all of the keywords we're targeting, organized nicely along with relevant data for each (keyword difficulty, search volume, etc.). Is there a way to do this other than running an individual report for each keyword? I'd like to avoid sending them a 50 page document showing all of the keyword research 😉 Thanks for any help! Josh
Keyword Research | | JoshTurner0 -
Keyword and Keyphrases
I'm looking to optimise my website for some keywords and keyphrases I'm getting a bit confused on how different pages might compete (or help) each other. As we are an automotive dealer I was thinking about building the hompage around 4 keywords (one for each franchise we represent e.g 'Ford'). These show high local monthly searches and medium competition for just the manufacturer name on its own. Then if someone drills down into a franchise homepage (linked from our homepage e.g. www.ourwebsite.com/ford) I was thinking to optimise the page around e.g. 'Ford Dealer' (which has medium local monthly searches and high competition). Then if someone drills down into a particular model I optimise around that and so on. Question is will I be playing the franchise homepage vs the group homepage (Ford vs Ford Dealer) as I have read here on Keyword Cannibalization? Or will it work together? Alternative I guess is not to focus around a franchise on the group homepage and then only focus on the franchise from the franchise homepage onwards but I feel I would be missing a trick? As a new kid on the block help will be most appreciated.
Keyword Research | | design_man0