Ranking for combined version of keyword but not separated version
-
Hi All,
My site is currently ranking on page 1 for the term "golfholidays" but is ranking at the bottom of page 3 for the term I am targeting and have optimised for, which is "golf holidays". Does anyone have any experience with the combined keyword ranking above the singular version? Nowhere on my page doesn't it mention the term "golfholidays" and backlinks to my site mostly use the anchor "golf holdiays"
Thanks!
-
I'd chalk it up to being a quirk. "Golf holidays" is the keyword that actually has volume, therefore anything happening on "golfholidays" is mostly a curiosity unless you can track conversions from it. I would ignore it and keep plowing forward with your efforts to rank for the one you care about.
More likely than not you just need to keep building the authority of your site and make sure your page is well optimized for the phrase "golf holidays" and you'll get there. Most of the sites I see ranking on page 1 for that query have a decent number of links to them. 5 results are homepages which tend to have more links than internal landing pages, and the landing pages that are ranking are reasonably well targeted. As an example of what it takes to show up with a well optimized internal page with no links - British Airways (https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/destinations/holiday-types/golf-holidays) is only ranking 10th for the query with a highly authoritative site.
-
Hi Andy,
Unfortunately, this is very common. It's also the case with plural and singular keywords. If you search (in Holland, in Dutch) for second hand car, you get a different SERP than when you search for second hand car_s_.
The site that ranks position #1 for the singular search, ranks on position #6 for the plural version. All the sites in the top 5 are sites with second hand cars, so there is no different intent in the search.
I'm afraid that there is not much you can do about it.... Maybe somebody else has a different experience?
Kind regards,
Robert
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
-
301 Redirect to add juice from Keyword A to Keyword B
Here's our situation: Our company sells Employee HANDBOOKS (the book that explains to employees how the company itself is run, more or less). That's the technically correct term for them. However, many people use this term interchangeably with Employee MANUALS. Employee MANUALS are actually slightly different. (they're more specific, usually a list of common office policies and procedures and how to do them) When doing Keyword research, we learned that many, many people search for Employee MANUALS when they actually are interested in an employee HANDBOOK. We've got our page optimized for the Keyword Employee HANDBOOKS, because in our copy we always refer to it as such. Here's my question: Would it be "cloacking" or some other blackhat nonsense if we did this: #1. Take a copy of the current page, and make a second page for it with a slightly different URL, but optimize the SEO-relevant parts for the phrase Employee MANUAL. #2. That page will also include a 301-redirect towards the original page, which is identical except the SEO bits are optimized for Employee HANDBOOKS. My understanding here is that we'd get the SEO juice from the phrase Employee Manual, without actually having to do the upkeep on two different pages. We also avoid having to have a random page SEO optimized for an improper term just because of the general confusion about what the product is called. Are we on the right track here? Or is this going to annoy Google, or not have the result I'm predicting? Any insight is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | CEDRSolutions0 -
2 Versions of Same Homepage
We want to show new and returning visitors different versions of our homepage (same URL) What, if anything, should we use as the markup to tell Google what we are doing?
Technical SEO | | theLotter
Any danger that Google will think we are cloaking? Thanks!0 -
Title Keyword Order Question
Hey there, Hoping someone could provide me with an answer / some insight into this. As an example, if I were to be targeting "Fish markets in" and "Fish shops in" as my keyword(s). And my site name was "The Fish Guide". I am trying to populate my title tags as best as possible without sacrificing readability and definitely making an effort to avoid the the spam-factor. Ideally I'd like to rank well (just focusing on titles at the moment, nothing else) when a user searches for "Fish markets in London" and **"Fish shops in London" **or "Fish markets in Los Angeles" or "Fish shops in Berlin" etc. If I were to use the following structure in my titles (in this case for London): "Fish markets and fish shops in London - The Fish Guide" Would this work as I hope? I.E. If a user searched for either "Fish shops in London" or "Fish markets in London" would the format of my title in this example work or would I need to have "Fish Markets in London" and "Fish Shops in London" grouped together? E.G. "Fish Markets in London - Fish Shops in London - The Fish Guide" Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Gorkonola0 -
Keyword domain usage
Hi I have a client who wants some advice on the following and I haven't come up with anything decent yet. So wanted to throw it out here. They own a domain like soccershoes.com which also houses their web site. They have now bought ussoccershoes.com because this US based search term is more popular than simply soccer shoes. How can they utilise this new domain effectively to drive traffic to their main web site? Thanks for any input.
Technical SEO | | yolkcreative0 -
Third Party Ranking Software
I have used a number of different tools for getting ranking information and have been using Cuterank but it now seems to be report the wrong results. Any suggestions for the best third party ranking software. It would allow me to check google, yahoo and bing ranks, compare month on month and produce branded PDFs. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | highwayfive0 -
Why mobi version of the file comes up higher on SERPs when compared to the web version?
hi Please see the URL http://news.oneindia.in/2011/10/22/tech-gmail-to-get-a-makeover-soon-google.html
Technical SEO | | greyniumseo
The corresponding mobile version is http://news.oneindia.mobi/2011/10/22/886893.html If we search for "Google video leaks; Gmail to get a make over soon" on Google the mobi version comes up instead of the web version. One reason could be because of the browser title. We do use meta title in our web version of the article. For the past few months our mobi version of the file comes up higher on SERPs when compared to the web version. What could be the reason? regards0 -
We have Lost Ranking After Panda update
Hi, on the last Updates of google Panda in Europe, we hAve Lost Ranking. What to do now? where to Start! Which Things First and which Second..? Need help, Tell me how to fix issuess...
Technical SEO | | leadsprofi0 -
What is the most likely reason we aren't ranking #1 for our keyword.
So we are targeting a keyword and we are ranking 2nd for it. Another company is ranking number 1. What is the best element to target for us to improve into position number one? Page authority: them 41, us 40. mozRank: them 5.52, us 3.38. mozTrust: them 5.86, us 5.58. mT/mR: them 1.1, us 1.4. Total Links: them 6571, us 68. Internal Links: them 1138, us 1. External Links: them 5431, us 63. Followed Links: them 6569, us 64. Nofollowed Links: them 2, us 4. Linking Root Domains: them 25, us 41. Broadkeyword usage in page title: them YES, us YES. KW in domain: them no, us partial. Exact anchor test links: them 161, us 21. % of links with exact anchor text: them 2%, us 30%. Linking Root domains with exact anchor text: them 2, us 11. Domain Authority: them 41, us 40. Domain MozRank: them 3.7, us 4.5. Domain MozTrust: them 3.8, us 4.5. External links to domain: them 22574, us 217. Linking root domains: them 50, us 48. Linking C-blocks: them 46, us 42. Tweets: them 1, us 12. FB shares: them 6, us 26.
Technical SEO | | Benj250