Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I exclude prepositions in tracked keywords of moz analytics?
-
I'm new to Moz. Just set up my trial campaign, and it had suggested many keywords. Many of the phrases that were suggested do not contain prepositions.
For example, instead of something like "sporting good stores in Chicago" it suggested "sporting good stores Chicago"
Today, I looked at the on-page optimization suggestions, which are (of course) suggesting that I remove prepositions from my page to rank well.
Well, as you know, that is unnatural to the reader. But I suspect people are searching in higher volume, leaving the prepositions out. I know that if I were to search for a sporting goods store in Chicago, I would probably leave out "in."
What should I do? Should I remove all the suggested keywords, and make them readable (which people are less like using in their search?) Do I go back to all my pages and try to optimize it for a keyword that is natural, but does not include a preposition (such as Chicago sporting goods stores) or should I be doing something else?
-
I agree with Joey. Most prepositions are stop words, so they may carry less weight in the search algorithm. That's not to say they aren't important. I just searched "sporting goods stores in Atlanta" and "sporting goods stores Atlanta" and got very slightly different results for each.
The on page optimization suggestions are just suggestions to point you in the right direction based on keywords you entered into the tool. You should never sacrifice usability for your readers in order to satisfy an SEO tool. The tool is just a starting point.
-
I would say let your keyword research do the talking. The tried and true method is to use your "seed" keywords, gather all the suggestions you can, measure which keywords hold the most value for you, and look for the opportunities. If one of your best opportunities has prepositions in it, there is your answer. I'm willing to bet you'll find valuable keywords that use them.
My observation is they don't carry much weight, but with voice searching on mobile, searches can be much more "conversational" when spoken into Siri or Google voice search. We tend to keep things short when we have to type it in, right? There is also Google's Hummingbird update, semantic search and natural language processing. WordStream did a great blog on this right after Google's Hummingbird update. I highly recommend you read the whole article. Here's an especially relevant quote:
"You only have to look at how accurate Google Now has become since its introduction to see that natural language processing is going to remain a major part of Google’s plans for search."
Overall, I'd use the prepositions. Natural language is important, sounds better, and the data is probably there suggesting you should keep it.
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 do you delete keywords in bulk?
Hi, in the 'rankings' section of one of my campaigns, I want to delete almost 200 keywords. Is there a way to delete keywords in bulk please? The only way I can find is to individually select keywords to delete but this will take too long to do with almost 200 keywords. Thanks
Moz Bar | | NavnitBB0 -
Keyword Ranking Report is Different than Real Result on Google
Hi Guys,
Moz Bar | | KanikaG
I am getting MOZ reports on a few keywords and that is good But when My client search for the same keywords he doesn't get the same rank, not even on that page. Let me explain in more details:
I have a keyword that shows on rank #5 in Google Mobile for a Local location for the current week. The client is from the same location as well. But when client search for that keyword from his mobile he doesn't get the keyword listed on that page, not even on other pages. I checked with other online keyword rank checker tool and all are showing the result similar to the Moz ranking report. It's really frustrating for my client. Google analytics shows that mobile users and organic reach are increasing so I am sure MOZ and other tools are showing us correct result. What could be the possible reason that he is not getting the same result as showing by MOZ? I am not from his location so how can I check the keyword result for the selected city using MOZ that is accurate? Any help would be highly appreciated. Please help. Thanks1 -
How do you use Moz to research related topics?
Like most of the folks here I'm a pretty big fan of the content that comes out through Whiteboard Fridays, and I try to apply the things I learn, but one of the WBF videos that I'm following along with does not do a stellar job of detailing execution using Moz KW Explorer. https://moz.com/blog/related-topics-in-seo-whiteboard-friday Now granted, this came out in 2016, but I still feel the core principle and strategy results in a higher quality piece of content and is still relevant to discovering and understanding searcher task completion requirements, and drafting content that fulfills those requirements. Towards the end Rand sort of mentions that you'll be able to do this with KW explorer, but I'm not really seeing the functionality. The steps I followed were to enter in the keyword in kw explorer, went to keyword suggestions, and selected "based on closely related topics" and ran it, but received no suggestions - came up blank. I then selected "based on broadly related topics" and the same thing happened. I tried this out with the keyword r22, keeping it very broad to start but that didn't seem to work. So what do you all do to perform this sort of research within Moz? Or do you even feel it's relevant in today's Rank Brain driven world?
Moz Bar | | brettmandoes0 -
Search volume discrepancies between keyword tools
I'm feeling like I'm basing all my research time on tools that I cannot necessarily trust. Between Google keyword planner, Keywords everywhere chrome extension, and Moz keyword explorer, I'm getting wildly different results on 2 simple keywords related to colleges with baking & pastry arts degrees. "baking college", "baking colleges" So Keyword planner won't give me any search volume for those 2 words, I don't even see them in the results. Instead, it decides I really meant "baker college" which has 33,100 global searches. I tried telling it use only closely related terms, but it keeps giving me "baker college" and refuses to show me the terms I asked for. Stubbornly useless. Keywords everywhere says both of these keywords bring in 33,100 searches. It does not tell me those searches were for "baker college." Totally misleading. Moz keyword explorer says baking college as 0-10 volume, baking colleges has 101-200 volume. So at least it's not trying to give me "baker college" numbers. Perhaps I can trust this, but it's not convenient to upload hundreds of various keywords at a time to pull the volume numbers like I do with the other tools. With Keyword planner making assumptions and grouping unrelated terms together, and Keywords everywhere using those numbers without pointing out the assumptions, I feel like I can't trust anything without taking time to dig into the discrepancies, which is impossible with hundreds of keywords. Do you know of any good search volume tools that don't force or hide assumptions? Thanks.
Moz Bar | | JannetteP1 -
Is Keyword Explorer now providing search volume by country?
I think Keyword Explorer was only providing search volume data for the US (whereas difficulty and opportunity were available at a country level) but recently I've started to see differences between the US volume data and the UK (see examples attached). Does this mean Keyword Explorer is now providing accurate volume data for the UK and other countries? DEIKsVJ 5kels
Moz Bar | | A_Q0 -
National or local tracking of keywords
I manage an account with +20 locations and have used the default National tracking on keywords, but realized that we might see higher rankings if I choose local tracking. If any of you have any experience in this, please tell the world!
Moz Bar | | peterpumkineater0 -
Need a Reliable Free Bulk Keyword Rank Checker
I have 2,871 keywords that I need to check Google rank for on 4 separate domains. Does anyone know of any FREE tools or plugins available that will allow for this volume that wont get my IP banned by Google? Even the Moz Rank Checker only allows to enter 1 keyword at a time for up to 200 per day. Who would seriously enter in 200 keywords, one by one all day, every day?
Moz Bar | | dsinger0 -
How do you stop Moz crawling a page?
Hello, I have a contact form which generates thousands of duplicate crawl errors. I'm going to use to block Google indexing these pages. Will this also block MOZ from crawling these pages and displaying the error? Thanks!
Moz Bar | | Seaward-Group0