What are tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 keywords (pages)?
-
I am seeing these terms, but for the life of mine I can't understand what they are. Could anybody explain that in layman's terms? Thanks.
-
In addition to Vahe's suggestion, it's possible the terms being used refer to what is also frequently referred to as "the long tail" of search.
Tier 1 or "head" terms are search terms with both extremely high search volume and very high competition Tier 2 or "body" terms have lower search volume and competition, and tier 3 or "long tail" terms are those which are so specific they are searched much less frequently, but also there are considerably fewer sites competing for their traffic.
Example:
tier 1 head term - "SEO"
tier 2 body term - "ecommerce SEO specialist"
tier 3 long tail term - "SEO specialist for WordPress in Seattle"Note it's not just the # of words in the term that determine it's tier, though usually longer terms will be located farther down. It's more the search volume and amount of competition that determines the classification.
There's lots of info on the long tail of search here at SEOMoz and the web in general if you want to get a deeper understanding of it's value.
Paul
-
Hi Vince,
I think they refer to primary, secondary or tertiary keyword targets used for the page; primary being the main keyword used to optimise the page.
Hope this helps,
Vahe
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 many words per page?
I know this has been answered before, but I don't think it has been in about a year (and we all know how quickly the SEO landscape can change). We're having a little debate on it right now and I'd be curious to get some feedback from the community. What is the minimum number of words you would use on a page? Does it matter to you if it's a second tier (website.com/x) or third tier (website.com/x/y) page? It's always a tough sell on design between trying to keep it clean and trying to provide a lot of useful information. I'd be curious what your thoughts are. Thanks! -Adam
Content Development | | AdamWormann1 -
Should i 301 redirect my blog to the respective site or just 404 all the blog pages?
Hi guys, We plan to close down our blog, which is a subdomain to our anchor site. I need advice on how to keep the link juice and its SEO value. Is it better to 301 redirect the blog to the homepage of our site, or just 404 all the pages of the blog? Thanks
Content Development | | dimicos0 -
I want to remove some pages from my site with PR, what should I do with traffic?
I have a section of a site that I want to remove. It has a main page linked from the nav menu, and a half dozen subpages under that. The pages get some traffic and have ranks up to PR3, which is what my site's home page is. I'm no longer want to do these pages as they require tremendous upkeep and I'm not interested in keeping them going. So, I know if I just remove these pages and that's all, I'm going to pay for it somewhere with Google. What else should I do? I do't really have similar pages to direct them too.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
Is this facebook a paid for page please advise
Hi i would love to have a commercial facebook page instead of my personal name, i would like to have my company name on facebook like the huffington post but not sure if you have to pay for it or not here is the huffington facebook page, can anyone let me know if this is a paid for page http://www.facebook.com/HuffPostUK
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Duplicate Text on Blog & Internal News Page
I have two places I post news for our company. Our blog - typically more informal posts
Content Development | | seo-hunter
mycompany.wordpress.com & Our news page - typically more newsworthy than the blog
mycompany.com/news My question is, It is okay to just copy the exact text from my wordpress blog and paste to my news area of my site and vice versa? Does this hurt ranking potential for either page?0 -
Displaying archive content articles in a writers bio page
My site has writers, and each has their own profile page (accessible when you click their name inside an article). We set up the code in a way that the bios, in addition to the actual writer photo/bio, would dynamically generate links to each article he/she produces. Figured that someone reading something by Bob Smith, might want to read other stuff by him. Which was fine, initially. Fast forward, and some of these writers have 3,4, even 15 pages of archives, as the archive system paginates every 10 articles (so www.example.com/bob-smith/archive-page3, etc) My thinking is that this is a bad thing. The articles are likely already found elsewhere in the site (under the content landing page it was written for, for example) and I visualize spiders getting sucked into these archive black holes, never to return. I also assume that it is just more internal mass linking (yech) and probably doesnt help the overall TOS/bounce/exit, etc. Thoughts?
Content Development | | EricPacifico0 -
Different pages with very similar H1's - will I get a penalty?
I currently have text articles about various topics on my site - for this example say I have written about "Negative Reinforcement". This article is live over a month now and getting listed on the first google page with an added keyword which the article is specifically related to. Now I want to create an infographic related to the same topic "Negative Reinforcement" - but I want to call the page this infographic will go on "Negative Reinforcement Infographic" while the article is currently called just "Negative Reinforcement". Neither page will have duplicate content from each other. The article is 2,000+ words so I don't want to throw more into it by adding on the infographic and I want to specifically create the infographic as linkbait and on a stand alone page. I am curious if adding another page with such a similar title and H1 have any negative effect ("dilute" the strength of the other article), for example will google take having two different pages with such a similar heading as potential keyword stuffing and penalise the site?
Content Development | | GavinC0