Keywords and content query
-
Hi we are in the process of redesigning a web site and I’m looking to ensure each of the pages are correctly optimized. I’m concerned that some of the pages do not allow for text or content . From an optimization perspective is there a general rule around the amount of text a page should have and the amount/ration of keywords they should contain? Any advice would be much appreciated.
-
Great answers guys thanks for getting back to me
-
Hello, I think your question can be broken down like this:
1. Is it a problem if I can't add text/content?
2. Is there a certain word count I should aim for?
3. Is there a specific number of keywords on page I should aim for?So I'll try to answer this as best I can and if you have more questions, just fire back.
1. This could be a problem if the content on page is something you'll need to rank well. It seems counterintuitive to many because "content is king" has been parroted as SEO wisdom for years, but there are times when content is NOT the primary driver of rankings, and the secret is in the intent of the searcher. Think about it like this, if you're searching "best ac repair service near me", you probably just want a short list of the best HVAC companies near you. A 3,000 word article is less helpful here than a short list of the best, and indeed when I run this very search the top 5 results are all lists. The number one result has less than 600 words, but all of them have user generated content in the form of reviews. Another example where content may not matter: "buy golf balls". You're going to get a lot of ecommerce listing style pages that are short on content but allow people to easily buy golf balls. I know this because I just ran this search yesterday to help another Mozzer. But if your page is meant to be informative, you may need the ability to modify, add, or remove content, so this could be a problem. Try to match the searcher's intent with the page and that will help you determine if this is truly an issue.
2. As we just demonstrated in example one, no specific word count is recommended for all queries. However, there was a study performed in September 2016 by Backlinko that analyzed about a million queries and one of their findings was this:
In fact, the average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words
This would indicate that longer content is better, but as I discovered early in my career - if you write content just to have the length it will flop. We tried it at scale and wrote the content just to have the length for about 120 websites. It performed the exact same as the content we had before it, which was about 500 words. So don't do that.
3. This one is short and easy. The answer is no. The metric you're referring to is Keyword Density, and it was short lived and shut down back when Matt Cutts was still at Google. The myth lives on but it's a garbage metric that doesn't correlate to success. Avoid using or even referencing this.
Hope that helps, let me know if you need more info.
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
-
Keyword optimisation
I have a few questions regarding keywords that we are wanting to optimize on our site. This may be a bit basic so if this had already been answered elsewhere let me know. Question 1: How many time can I refer to the one word on different pages on the site ? Is there any rules around this? In theory the keywords we are looking to include will be relevant to these pages. **Question 2: ** Should I use different variation of the key word or is the one variant fine? Question 3: Looking at the search terms people use from google analytics to get to our site, there is a lot of people using the phrase “sliding windows New Zealand. Should I write this on the page exactly as “sliding doors New Zealand “ or is “sliding doors” fine? Its just that the former phrase doesn't really work with our communication. I look forward to your advice!
Keyword Research | | aplnzjune180 -
Different Blog Articles - What about Keywords Cannibalization?
Hi everyone, I have a question in regards to blog articles and long tail keywords variation. I usually create landing pages for the services of my business and create related topics for my blog with long tail keywords (tips, best practice, etc.). However, by using this method, I am a bit worried about the ranking of the different pages/blog posts. _(See Attachment - in this example, I tracked it with Serplab. MOZ keywords tracking is giving me the same result anyway). _ I created a blog post with a related topic 'office interior design tips'. Unfortunately, when looking at the ranking, the previous page (office-design) is not ranking anymore for this keywords and instead, the blog post office-interior-design-tips took his place. It moved from position 11 to 29 only because I created a blog post related to the topic. Therefore, what happened to the previous page? Does it stop to rank for this keywords once there is another blog post that is related to it? How can we avoid this fluctuation of ranking due to cannibalization? One can assume that by creating relevant content related to this topic, it should rank higher no? Thanks in advance for your answers. serp.png
Keyword Research | | Juvo0 -
Potential Keyword Cannibalisation
Hi, I am concerned that our website's rankings are currently being affected by KW cannibalisation. We don't rank too badly for our target keywords but they could, of course, be better, especially as the niche is very competitive! One thing that is bothering me is that our internal pages do not rank well for these KWs and instead it is the homepage appearing in the rankings. This is despite the fact that the internal pages are optimised for the different keywords. Basically the HP is also targeting these same keywords and I was wondering if this is affecting our rankings overall? I am not keen to risk changing the homepage in case our rankings suffer massively and we drop out of Google completely. If anyone could offer some advice then that would be great. Is it simply a case of trying to get external links pointing to these internal pages? Would internal linking to them prove effective as well? Cheers Tom
Keyword Research | | National-Homebuyers1 -
Google Keyword Planner - Just PPC?
Morning Mozzers, Please help a layman learn. This is probably a silly question but when I look at keyword search data in Google's Keyword Planner Tool and I see "COMPETITIVE" or "LOW" am I looking at all searches inclusive of organic and PPC? I have been a bit confused by logging in through an Adwords account? At the moment to get my keyword research I am using a combination of Moz, Webmaster Tools, Keyword Planner. I have had a look at the free version of SEMrush which looks really cool. Is my approach right using these tools? Am I covering all bases / missing key opportunities? Regards Ben
Keyword Research | | Bendall0 -
Keyword Research for country not listed by Google
Hello everyone, I have a client in a country that is not listed in Google. Effectively there is no adwords data available... how do I perform keyword research for such a country. Any suggestions will be really helpful. Regards,
Keyword Research | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
Does SEOmoz account for keyword variations?
If I want to know my rank for bank account, do I need to list bank accounts as well or will my ranking include variations? Also, if I use the word bank as a keyword, will any search that contains the word bank (even when other words are included) count towards the ranking for that word? Or would I need to add additional keywords like dallas bank, local bank, etc?
Keyword Research | | Mpulliam0 -
Adding qualifiers to keywords?
I know that it's worth adding qualifiers to high value keywords to create long-tail variations which will later have the potential to rank well for the main keyword as well... My questions is, how important is it that the newly-formed keyword/phrase also be evaluated for search volume? E.g. "tips for job interviews" has a high search volume, but scores 72 in the Keyword Difficulty tool - quite high. I would therefore be tempted to create a "10 tips for job interviews" articles or something similar, yet THIS particular phrase is searched for <10 times per month... If there are not any easy-to-find qualifiers that also create a well-searched for keyword/phrase, is it still worth adding them?
Keyword Research | | staingurus0 -
Is this keyword cannibalization?
Hi, Is using keywords in different orders considered keyword cannibalization? for example, if I my client has a catering business based in mississauga, Ontario, should I create separate 2nd tier pages on the following keywords? 1. mississauga catering 2. catering mississauga 3. catering in mississauga Is that keyword cannibalization? The reason I ask is because it's often hard to find a good # of diverse keywords for local businesses that are also used more than a few times each month in the search engines. thanks, Martin
Keyword Research | | RogersSEO0