What makes a keyword good?
-
Having taken a day-long course not long ago, I'm new to SEO and I'm struggling to decide which keywords to target. I work in a really niche area: we make booking engines that allow travel agencies to sell flights, hotels, cars and other travel services online.
I know there are various tools on the web (and on Moz) which give you the average monthly searches and competition for each term but I still don't understand how to decide which ones to target.
For example, the term 'travel systems' gets a high amount of search and the competition for it is high. However, Google brings back results about prams and buggies so I think I should avoid this one.
Another is 'travel solutions' which gets a high amount of search and is low on competition. Google brings back results about travel agencies. This is more our area but our target audience is travel agencies so I'm not really sure I'd be attracting the right traffic?
I'd be really grateful for any advice that you can give me.
-
Hi There,
It's great that you're niche. This means that you don' really need to worry much about difficulty. I get frustrated with people talking all the time about 'difficulty'. It's self-defeating. You should go out there and write content that's so good it beats all the competition no matter how 'competitive' or 'difficult' the keyword. If anyone in my team said they were going to be dissuaded from doing something because it was 'too difficult' I'd send them to another team
So look at your competitors but don't blindly follow them. Speak to your customers, stakeholders and suppliers to discover the words they use. Are there phones that you can listen in to at your business? I listen to call recordings to get a feel for what language patients are using.
And at the end of the day don't worry too much about semantics. Google is very good now at figuring out what you are talking about so I would be tempted to just do some free thinking and try to write the most comprehensively, the most brilliantly and with the most detail about these products and your customers will find you.
If they are technical customer, write technically. Don't 'dumb it down'. Use the big complex words and include an FAQ section to pick up questions and long tail keywords (but beware of keyword stuffing)
Once you have written some content then you'll be able to optimise and analyse and test and get a feel for what is right and what people are searching for and reading about. The competitor research is just the start and in a really niche place you often just need to get things down and out there in the world and see how they perform.
Once you get cracking you'll soon become an absolute specialist and if you keep your eyes on the data you should be able to dominate your niche. Tight niches are great. You're lucky because broad or very high volume keywords can have problems all of their own.
-
Hello,
Obviously you're looking for a combination of volume, relevance and difficulty. Low volume keywords which are difficult to rank for are less attractive than high volume keywords which have a low difficulty.
That said, those high volume keywords need to be as relevant as possible. I would always suggest that your content and SEO focus should be around user intent rather than specific words.
If you start with a list of what your customer's user intent is, then add in what problems your product solves, you will very quickly have written your keyword list - some of those keywords may be long tail but I don't think it matters all that much.
Example:
"software for travel agencies"
"programs that allow travel agencies to sell bookings online"
"Best travel agency software"
"travel agency online booking software"
"software for online tour operators"etc
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
-
Finding less competitive keywords
Hello, How Moz can help me in finding less competitive keywords for a site based on omega masticating juicer. I had tried other tools but i am not satisfied with it. Kindly tell me the process to find it. Thanks.
Keyword Research | | romanjames0 -
How do I use two keywords?
Hello! I am ranking very well with a keyword. But that same keyword without an S at the end (making it singural) gets quite a few more searches per month according to Google's Keyword Tool. However, dropping the S just doesn't sound quite right or make as much sense. So how can I target both keywords? Thanks in advance!
Keyword Research | | 2bloggers0 -
Keyword Analysis Tool
Can someone please enlighten me on the Keyword Analysis tool Matrix. Does Domain Linking refer to the number of links back to that domain as a whole? Also why is it that a page with a lower page ranking can be way ahead of one with a domain ranking that is way higher or vice-a -versa? What is a good number to go after? what is actually attainable? Thanks
Keyword Research | | nooneoconnor0 -
Local Keyword Geolocation
I am really confused about how geolocation and search works. For example, I can search "Air Conditioning Repair" in Google and will get local search results depending on my geolocation. How do I set up keywords in SEOmoz "Air Conditioning Repair" and get the ranking depending on the users geolocation? Do I have to have the keyword "Sacramento Air Conditioning Repair" to get the same results if I search within the vicinity of Sacramento with the term "Air Conditioning Repair." Thanks in advance for everyones help on this question.
Keyword Research | | TalkingSheep0 -
Keyword variations
I have a question about keyword variations. To be specific, let's say "blue upside down cars" has low competition but fairly low traffic. However, the shortened variation "upside down cars" has low competition but extremely high traffic. Can I double my bet by going ahead and using "blue upside down cars" whereby in some instances Google would refer traffic based on the entire keyword, but it would also refer traffic based on the the last part of the keyword which has the higher traffic ("upside down cars"). In this case, we would optimize around "blue upside down cars" with hopes of getting traffic for both keywords (the long tail and longer tail). Is there any reason not to pursue this strategy? I hope I made sense!
Keyword Research | | amandahx20 -
Is it important to have exact keyword in your URL
I have researched exact keywords and noted a four word phrase which has fairly good numbers for exact keyword local searches a month with low competition. If I was to make it as my web address it would mean having www. (18 letters).co.uk Is it important to have the exact keyword in the URL for ranking purposes? Is an 18 letter web address either side of the www and .co.uk too long?
Keyword Research | | TCWorkouts0 -
Keyword Difficulty Score Assesment
What is a good keyword difficulty score to pursue when deciding which keywords to try and rank on? I'm in a very competitive field and I am currently in the process of doing keyword research to look for the low hanging fruit.
Keyword Research | | 13375auc30