Keyword confusion
-
Thanks for taking the time to read through this.
I'm currently optimizing a website and have a few structural questions:
-
How should one view targeting keywords with respect to the home page of any given site? EG -> If the home page has the preferred keywords at the beginning of title and the page follows most if not all the recommendations from SEOMOZ tools, why are sub pages outranking my root domain for the set of keywords I'm after?
-
When sub pages use my homepage keyword as the 2nd keyword in its respective title, does that give the overall homepage more power for the keyword it's after?
EG. Homepage Title "ABC DEF - DEF ABC - XYZ | Company name
I'm targeting "ABC DEF" for the home page
Subpage title -> "DEF ABC - ABC DEF - XYZ | Company Name.
The sub page keyword is "DEF ABC"
-
-
I don't understand why you insist on cramming SEO and Kingston in the title of every single page you make. It isn't necessary. I would suggest stepping back from SEO mode and going into functional mode. Ask yourself what would really make your site the best site for information on SEO and SEO services in Kingston. Build that site. Forget about Google and keywords. Build a variety of pages related to SEO, but not necessarily about SEO. You can break it up with information useful to readers like how to optimize a landing page, what UX converts buyers, etc. And for Pete's sake, don't put SEO and Kingston in EVERY title or on every page. Get as much information as you can and make each page informative and useful. Don't focus on SEO at all - just build the site for people. When you're done with this and you have a functional and informational site that people like to use, you can then go back and edit it for SEO. It looks like you're obsessed with rankings and keywords. This is going to get in the way of your overall goal - ranking for your keywords.
That's the best advice I have for you. Good luck!
-
Very insightful feedback. Thank you for the recommendations.
My thoughts were simply this (square brackets denote keyword target):
Kingston SEO and SEO Kingston don't appear to be the same simply because the Google SERP display very different results. That was the impetus for creating multiple pages with specific keyword targets.
-home [kingston seo]
-services
--kingston seo services [kingston seo services]
--service2 [etc]
-seo kingston packages [seo kingston]
The overlapping characteristics of the keywords however has made this more challenging in the end. I believe you're correct with the restructure. But with so many key terms overlapping each other with keywords, wouldn't I end up in the same place again - having multiple pages effectively jockeying and competing against each other?
-
I can lead you to water, Thomas, but I can't make you drink. You should not be targeting the exact same keywords on your internal page as your home page. With each sub page your keyword set should be more and more precise. 3 links deep should be pages that are very precise and they should be sniping long-tailed keywords from Google SERPs. You don't have to worry about how link juice travels all around the internet to make your site rank well. Don't get yourself confused with all the jargon and details of SEO. Make your site for people first - then Google. If you build a home page about Kingston SEO and then I go to a subpage and its about SEO in Kingston... ?? i'm confused. Plus, Kingston SEO and SEO Kingston are really the same aren't they? I think you should reevaluate your site structure and exactly what you're trying to accomplish.
Obviously, your goal is to rank for Kingston SEO and SEO Kingston. That should be the focus of your home page. A good idea for a sub page is "Why we're the best SEO Company in Kingston". Then build a landing page around that topic and try to get that page to rank for "best seo company kingston", etc.
-
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
The challenge I'm facing is that my key terms are for these two pages are simply reverses of one another. "Kingston SEO" vs "SEO Kingston". My sub page is optimized for SEO Kingston whereas my front page is optimized for Kingston SEO.
In addition to this, I'm still confused about the concept of inner pages feeding keyword juice back to the front page.
Thoughts?
-
You're discovering one of the Google algo changes the hard way, Thomas. The explanation is more than I'm willing to bang out on a keyboard. In short, Google has shifted the value to sub pages for some keywords. It also has to do with the keywords and if Google thinks they're broad match or specific. Broad match USUALLY works best for the home page. But what you consider to be broad match keywords might not be what Google considers to be broad match keywords. Google is telling you that it likes your internal page better. Focus on your internal page to rank. You'll be surprised at the results.
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
-
Meta keywords
should every site have meta keywords or is this not used anymore? I don't use yoast and prefer rank math but there is nowhere to insert it. when I look at moz bar it shows meta keywords as a field so maybe it is important...
On-Page Optimization | | Mosaj0 -
Can we rank website without main keywords on its homepage?
For example my company website on Google Search Engine... Web Design Company & Digital Agency in Jakarta
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool
coriate.com/
Coriate is a website design & Internet marketing firm in Indonesia. We offer the best web solutions, digital advertising, and SEO Services in the industry. Can I do backlink to it, but different keywords? Like Social Media Management or Facebook Like?0 -
Website went from page 10 to 31 for a keyword
Hey Everyone I hope someone could really help me here. My website: goo.gl/5fLqv, it is an ecommerce website and just in the last few days for one my keywords "Wedding Favours" it dropped to page 31 from page 10. Could someone help me please on how to resolve this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | VIVOWeb0 -
How do you optimize for keyword phrases that don't follow natural speech patters?
For instance, We have a phase "solar panels for home" that sends decent traffic to our site, but I'm sure we could be capturing more if any of our content was optimized better for it. But how do you optimize for a phrase that makes you sound like a robot if you use it verbatim?
On-Page Optimization | | wreevesc0 -
Main Page Gone For Main Keyword
For the past 5-6 months I have consistenly ranked at positions #14-16 for snow guards on snoshield.com. The past 3 days I cannot find the home page anywhere in Google for that keyword. The only thing that has really changed over the past two months is I placed 3 guest blog posts on pretty highly trusted sites that are industry related and created links to the site using suggestions from getlisted. I've read other reports of others seeing similar things happen recently. I don't think this is a penguin thing, because I can still find the site by searching for the company name, I just can't find it when searching the keyword. I did notice that a different page on the site is now ranking in position #21 for this keyword, but this page is optimized for a different keyword phrase. Is it possible that even though the sub page is optimized for a different keyword phrase, I am cannibalizing the site?
On-Page Optimization | | kadesmith0 -
Is keyword stuffing relative to total copy length or an absolute rule?
My seomoz report has warned me about 38 occurrences of a keyword on a page, is that always too many? 19 of them are in my reviews tab, "I love KEYWORD", etc. I expect to get more reviews and more keyword mentions. If I had to keep that page to 15 or fewer, I would have no reviews tab.
On-Page Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
Site Stucture Advice - Keyword Dillema
I am creating a new site and am looking for some advice on how to structure the site Using Google's keyword search tool it seems like I have a dilemma in that about 50% of the keyword pairs are contained in 10 keyword pairs that are similar The first two pairs have about 49% of the traffic and only differ between plural / singular, not quite sure how to handle that, or if google has a method to make these more or less synonomous The last 8 pairs are roughly similar in distribtuion As an example (not my case, just for visualization) Mountain Bike Classes Mountain Bike Instruction Mountain Bike Workshops Mountain Bike Training Etc ... which all more or less give the same results (yes some difference but they all deal with learning how to ride a mountain bike, again this is not my exact case, don't care a whit about mountain bikes 😉 I don't see giving each of those kinds of pairs their own page since the content would be pretty much the exact same, making it substantially different would also be problematic (if I am thinking about this correctly) I have a clean slate to work with from a site perspective so I am wondering how people here would, or better yet have handled similar situations
On-Page Optimization | | bThere0 -
Similar Keywords/Different Pages
My question is about my content strategy regarding keywords and page creation. For this example I will use the following keywords: "widget financing" "widget leasing" "widget loans" "thingy financing" "thingy leasing" "leasing loans" "whatchamacallit financing" "whatchamacallit leasing" "whatchamacalit loans" You get the idea. Now I have created a separate page for each of these keywords. There are about 70 keywords and their respective pages. Although all of these describe the same thing I have re-written each page. In other words I didn't use the same content and just substituted the keywords. Each page is roughly 200 to 500 words. I do rank very well for most of these keywords. I would post some of the pages from my site here but I didn't know if that is frowned on. My fear/concern is will I get in trouble in a "post Panda" world. Again, the pages rank very well I just want to be in good graces with Google going forward.
On-Page Optimization | | leaseman0