Connecting long tail keywords to pages
-
New to Moz and this forum, so be gentle.
I’m in the process of overhauling a generally neglected website and have just finished some research on long tail keywords. My question is, how do I implement these? For example, I’ve got a product “Acme Widget” which has its own page on the site (and ranking well for the product name itself). I have lots of long tail keyword sets which describe key benefits of the products – some of which appear in the product copy, others which don’t (perhaps because the thing that a user may search for is ugly/bad-English in copy). For the sake of argument, let’s say I have the following long tail keywords for my Acme Widgets.
- cheap red widget
- los angleles widget
- strong green widgets florida
What is the best way to implement these? Do I need to simply incorporate the text into my main Acme Widgets page, or do I need to have separate pages which are highly targeted to each long tail keyword? The problem with the former is unnatural/ugly copy. The problem with the latter is that coming up with enough content to justify (and rank) a page on each keyword set would be quite a challenge.
Regards,
Warren -
Hello Warren,
The more you think about this the more likely you are to get yourself in trouble with Google. Just write informatively and naturally, with the goal of converting the visitor, and you should be fine.
I know this advice sounds like it's brushing off the question, but it's not. If you start putting keywords like "los angeles widget" and "strong green widget florida" into the copy you're going to ruin your chances of ranking well in the long-term... Likewise if you start creating geographic targeted doorway pages. Both of these tactics are against Google's Webmaster Guidelines and are pretty easy for them to spot.
I would take these "long tail" keywords and group them by topic. For example:
Widgets (size)
Widgets (strength)
Widgets (location)Then I would total up the search volume for each "set" of long tail keywords. If it looks like it might be worthwhile to create content, then put up a page for each set and use the variations naturally. Don't worry if you can't use them all exactly. Google gave you the data so you can assume they already know the semantic relationships between the phrases - thus, you don't need to put them all in there. Search for "Cheap Widget" and you'll see results for "Inexpensive Widgets". Make sense?
If you do create these topical pages just be sure that they are valuable to the visitor. If they're not you could harm your site.
-
Thanks for your advice on this one too, Linda. I'm pleased that the implementation does not involve a new page for every long-tail keyword. As part of a copy overhaul, I'll carefully craft in all the variants.
Language differences are a challenge... while I can work in "mobile" and "cellular" into copy, spelling differences between US and British English will look a bit odd. e.g. color/colour.
/W
-
Welcome to the community!
The great thing about long-tail keywords is that you don't need a page for every one, in fact you shouldn't. A well-written page can rank for a number of keywords.
What additional pages would make sense, given what people are looking for and what you have for content?
If the queries being used mainly have to do with simple variations, that is something you could probably add to your main widgets page [green widgets vs. red widgets]. If it has to do with a more basic difference [premium heavy-duty widgets vs bargain household widgets] those could probably be separate pages.
And definitely don't worry about matching ungrammatical search terms--Google can figure that part out and the last thing you would want is ugly/bad page copy!
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
-
Site Crawl -> Duplicate Page Content -> Same pages showing up with duplicates that are not
These, for example: | https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_campaign=july15&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=blog | 1 | 2 | 29 | 2 | 200 |
Technical SEO | | writezach
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.145821812.1573134750.1440742418 | 1 | 1 | 25 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=brightpod-article | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=marketplace&utm_campaign=homepage | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=first-3-must-watch-videos | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.159789566.2132270851.1418408142 | 1 | 5 | 31 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_source=vocus&utm_medium=PR&utm_campaign=52release | Any suggestions/directions for fixing or should I just disregard this "High Priority" moz issue? Thank you!0 -
Thousands of 404-pages, duplicate content pages, temporary redirect
Hi, i take over the SEO of a quite large e-commerce-site. After checking crawl issues, there seems to be +3000 4xx client errors, +3000 duplicate content issues and +35000 temporary redirects. I'm quite desperate regarding these results. What would be the most effective way to handle that. It's a magento shop. I'm grateful for any kind of help! Thx,
Technical SEO | | posthumus
boris0 -
How to get google to forget my old but still working page and list my new fully optimized page for a keyword?
Hi There! (i am beginner in seo) I have dynamic and static pages on our site. I created a static page for a specific keyword. Fully optimized it, (h1, alt, metas, etc.....maybe too optimized). My problem is that this page is alive for weeks, checked it in GWT and it is in robots.txt, google sees it, and indexed it. BUT whenewer i do a search for that keyword, we still appear with the dynamically created link in the google listings. How could i "redirect" google, if sy make a search for that keyword than shows our optimized page? Is there a tool for that? I cant delete the dynamic page... Any ideas? Thx Andrew
Technical SEO | | Neckermann0 -
If the order of products on a page changes each time the page is loaded, does this have a negative effect on the SEO of those pages?
Hello, a client of mine has a number of category pages that each have a list of products. Each time the page is reloaded the order of those products changes. Does this have a negative effect on the pages' rankings? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Kerry_Jones2 -
How to target long tail keywords
Apologies if this is already answered, I'm a newbie. I'm looking to determine how to target long tail keywords. I'm supporting a site that is new and with very small budgets in the very competitive life insurance market. If we devise a list of long tail keywords, should we then add those to the page titles, meta descriptions etc rather than the short tail ones that the site will never rank for anyway?
Technical SEO | | aoifep0 -
If my home page never shows up in SERPS but other pages do, does that mean Google is penalizing me?
So my website I do local SEO for, xyz.com is finally getting better on some keywords (Thanks SEOMOZ) But only pages that are like this xyz.com/better_widgets_ or xyz.com/mousetrap_removals Is Google penalizing me possibly for some duplicate content websites I have out there (working on, I know I know it is bad)...
Technical SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Keywords Ranking Dropped
Hi All, One of my website http://www.greenhomepest.com/ were ranking on Google first page for the keywords as mentioned below: pest control in Scottsdale
Technical SEO | | RuchiPardal
pest control in Mesa
pest control in Gilbert
pest control in Tempe
pest control in Peoria
pest control in Queen Creek
pest control in Glendale
pest control phoenix
pest control arizona
pest control az
pest control phoenix az
Pest Control in Chandler But some days before all keywords are disappeared from top 100.I tried to find out the reason but not succeed. Can you please help me to find out the exact reason behind this??0 -
SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostic indicates duplicate page content for home page?
My first SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostic report for my website indicates duplicate page content for my home page. It lists the home page URL Page Title and URL twice. How do I go about diagnosing this? Is the problem related to the following code that is in my .htaccess file? (The purpose of the code was to redirect any non "www" backlink referrals to the "www" version of the domain.) RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^whatever.com [NC]
Technical SEO | | Linesides
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.whatever.com/$1 [L,R=301] Should I get rid of the "http" reference in the second line? Related to this is a notice in the "Crawl Notices Found" -- "301 Permanent redirect" which shows my home page title as "http://whatever.com" and shows the redirect address as http://http://www.whatever.com/ I'm guessing this problem is again related to the redirect code I'm using. Also... The report indicates duplicate content for those links that have different parameters added to the URL i.e. http://www.whatever.com?marker=Blah Blah&markerzoom=13 If I set up a canonical reference for the page, will this fix this? Thank you.0