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.
How many keywords max can I optimize each page for?
-
I don't want to over optimize by doing 1 keyword per 1 page, but then if I do more, seomoz on-page tool report doesn't give an A grade for each keyword I optimize.
I usually optimize for max 3 keywords that are very closely related, meaning they use the same words. Ex.
dentist los angeles, los angeles dentist, dentist in los angeles
Am I on the right track or what's your recommendation? Should I create different landing pages for each keyword?
-
Hi, are you talking about the keywords that one can add to a page or words that make up the title and content tags? Thanks.
-
Google does not care if you target 1 keyword or 10. The problem you face is, all other factors being equal, a competitor who only targets one word on a page will always beat a page which targets multiple words.
Ranking in search engines is purely a competition. I recommend you go all out and try to rank #1 (or as high as reasonably possibly). Once you have achieved top rankings for your primary keyword, THEN you can try to get greedy and diversify to multiple keywords.
-
Yes but then how get a good on-page optimization if you are doing like 10 keywords per page? I mean, it's not possible to put 10 keywords on title, h1, url etc. Don't you think Google will question what the site is all about if you go more than 2-3, it's just becomes very difficult.
-
i would quickly add, if you don't have much linkjuice then stick to 2 terms max per page.
-
Below are the results of the keywords you shared (and more) from SEMrush (www.semrush.com).
Based on those results, I would focus on "dentist los angeles". That is tied for first place as the term with the most traffic. Next, you have a choice as to which you place the most importance upon..."dentist" or "los angeles". I prefer your niche rather then your location. Why? It is far more relevant to capture searches for "Dentist ???" then for "los angeles ???".
In competitive niches, you usually need to focus a single keyword target per page. If you focus more then one, you can or will be beat by others who practice more focused SEO on their page.
| Keyword | Δ Volume | CPC | Com. | Results | Trend | |
| dentist los angeles | 1,300 | 14.69 | 0.87 | 19,500,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles dentist | 1,300 | 15.52 | 0.89 | 19,800,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| cosmetic dentist los angeles | 590 | 22.86 | 0.98 | 2,050,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentist in los angeles | 480 | 11.62 | 0.94 | 21,900,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles cosmetic dentist | 480 | 20.84 | 0.90 | 3,940,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles dentists | 480 | 12.24 | 0.85 | 9,600,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentist in los angeles ca | 260 | 10.57 | 0.90 | 8,740,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles cosmetic dentists | 260 | 11.18 | 0.92 | 3,730,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentists in los angeles | 210 | 10.85 | 0.85 | 9,600,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentist west los angeles | 210 | 9.22 | 0.88 | 7,800,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
-
There are no hard and fast rules for how many keywords you can optimize each page for. It can be as little as one word to a many as ten or more.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tactical-seo-how-many-termsphrases-should-i-target-on-a-single-page
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
-
Does anyone know of a tool where you can get all of the keyword that any given landing page is ranking for?
I'd like to find out what landing pages are ranking for which keywords, but I haven't been able to find a tool that does it. I was hoping there would be something where I could submit the url and get a list of every keyword it is ranking for. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Powerblanket0 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
Should you have two separate pages for synonym keywords?
Suppose that you want to rank for two keyword phrases that mean the same thing but are slightly different in spelling. When should you put both keyword phrases on one page versus two pages? What are the pros and cons?
On-Page Optimization | | ProjectLabs0 -
Too many links on page -- how to fix
We are getting reports that there are too many links on most of the pages in one of the sites we manage. Not just a few too many... 275 (versus <100 that is the target). The entire site is built with a very heavy global navigation, which contains a lot of links -- so while the users don't see all of that, Google does. Short of re-architecting the site, can you suggest ways to provide site navigation that don't violate this rule?
On-Page Optimization | | novellseo2 -
Can I use the first sentence of my page content as a meta description tag as well?
I just want to copy my content on the page and use the first or as well the second sentence of the content self for my meta description tag. Is that OK? Or should the Meta description tag be different?
On-Page Optimization | | paulinap19830 -
Is there a SEO penalty for multi links on same page going to same destination page?
Hi, Just a quick note. I hope you are able to assist. To cut a long story short, on the page below http://www.bookbluemountains.com.au/ -> Features Specials & Packages (middle column) we have 3 links per special going to the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | daveupton
1. Header is linked
2. Click on image link - currently with a no follow
3. 'More info' under the description paragraph is linked too - currently with a no follow Two arguments are as follows:
1. The reason we do not follow all 3 links is to reduce too many links which may appear spammy to Google. 2. Counter argument:
The point above has some validity, However, using no follow is basically telling the search engines that the webmaster “does not trust or doesn’t take responsibility” for what is behind the link, something you don’t want to do within your own website. There is no penalty as such for having too many links, the search engines will generally not worry after a certain number.. nothing that would concern this business though. I would suggest changing the no follow links a.s.a.p. Could you please advise thoughts. Many thanks Dave Upton [long signature removed by staff]0 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5