Should I be optimizing for Keywords that we already rank for?
-
When selecting which Keywords to optimize for, should I choose all words that I want us to move up for? Like that my company appears ranked for 5, 10, 42, 44, etc.?
Or should I select a mix of some that rank well (top 1-2 pgs in Google) /rank near pg 5/ and some that aren't showing up in the top 50 yet?
I don't want to waste my time optimizing for words I don't need to.
Thanks!
-
Yes it is thank you.
-
Just so I can understand the question let me try to rephrase it back to you. You want to know how to prioritize your keyword targets. Specifically you want to know how much _less priority _you should give a given keyword that you are already ranking well for.
If I am understanding your question correctly, then I have to say that I don't have enough information to fully answer it. I agree with itrogers in that I think you need to factor in the traffic of each of your keyword targets. And I would add that you should factor in the difficulty of each, too. And consider factoring in the commercial intent (on noes, the tool's down!) of each. And if different keywords reflect an interest in different products or services that represent different profit margins for you, that should be taken into consideration. And ideally if you have enough conversion rate data for each keyword, that should be a factor too! And for that matter, if you can figure out how to group related keywords together such that would lend synergy to your on-page SEO, all the better.
But without a clearly defined metric for finding the efficiency of each keyword or keyword cluster (KEI isn't good enough—this is a step in the right direction, though), and without the values for each factor for your keywords, I still want to say something along the lines of "yeah, you want to target a mixture—some keywords that you are already strong in, since an improvement from position 10 to position 1 represents a ginormous (if anyone knows of a better dataset, let us know!) increase in traffic, but you also want to be working on some longer-term keyword targets that might represent more traffic in the long run, but are more difficult and so require some longer-term planning".
Is that helpful at all?
-
Cool thank you. Does anyone else have any other opinions?
-
I think you should keep optimizing for keywords that you already rank for, if you are not #1, your pages can still be better optimized. Keep them in back of you mind, but don't forget about them. With SEO, you don't have to sacrifice a lot of keywords as long as they are all somewhat related. Also, a good measurement to see if you should keep any keywords or variations or not is to check their search volume in Google Keyword Tool. That is what would tell you if you are wasting time on not.
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
-
Is it a bad idea to hyphenate keywords?
Hello, my understanding was that Google reads hyphens in keywords as spaces, but if that's accurate how come keywords with hyphens that I research with Keyword Explorer — for instance, hospital-acquired infections — rank lower when I include the hyphen? If the hyphen hurts SEO, do I have to remove them all from the blog or page in question? Removing hyphens means a blog or page will have punctuation errors, which is irritating to an editor, but I don't want to sacrifice the effectiveness of keywords, either. Thanks, in advance, for your response!
Keyword Research | | SallieJ0 -
Keyword tracking for all keywords that contain a specific keyword
Hello, Is it possible to see keyword performance for all keywords that contain a specific phrase? Then see which landing page each keyword is most likely associated to? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | STP_SEO0 -
Rankings going up, traffic decreasing
Hi there, I have been burned 3 times with shonky/bad SEO experts so was nervous about paying another company, so I am trying to learn SEO myself. My rankings are going up, but my traffic is at an all time low. This doesn't really make sense to me. Can anyone help me? Thanks, Astrid
Keyword Research | | Lilala_Kids0 -
Keyword Over-usage?
I have a photography page, where there are a number of galleries. In the galleries and thumbnails of each photo I'm selling. These also include the title. It's built dynamically. However, I've noticed when I do an on-page grade check, that one of the places I'm failing is over-using the keyword on the page. This is mainly due to the titles of each photo containing that keyword. For example, there might be a photo gallery for images of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and 30 of the 40 images on the page have a title with "Golden Gate Bridge" in them. So naturally, the title is displaying this on the page and showing up 30+ times (after the term is used in the page text as well). Is this a really big problem, or is the benefit on each individual photo page outweighing any hit on the gallery page? Any thoughts? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | shannmg10 -
Keyword Difficulty Report
Hi I am a seo beginner, please help me to know and usability of Keyword Difficulty Report. Actually, i see the difficulty percentage is 28 for a keyword and i have option to generate defficulty report. Bit confused how can i use this?
Keyword Research | | Webworld_Norway0 -
Keyword analysis tool
Is it not working? I have not been able to use it for the past 2 or so days.
Keyword Research | | JohnWalker0 -
Should I use Phrase Keywords when doing Keyword Research?
Hi all, I've spent the past couple of days doing some extensive keyword research in Adwords Traffic Estimator, looking for keywords to optimise my pages. I've been searching using EXACT so I get a realistic value but I'm wondering if PHRASE is better suited for research after all its more likely someone will visit my site via a phrase match than exact? What are your thoughts on this?
Keyword Research | | Seaward-Group0 -
Do you avoid the use of stop words in your keyword optimization?
For example, for the keyword phrase 'the history of the united states,' how would you determine whether or not to include 'the' or 'of' in the title, description, and URL? Do you tend to use stop words or not in your keyword optimization? Why or why not?
Keyword Research | | nicole.healthline0