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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
How can a page rank for keywords that it does not have on it?
I have a client that is ranking in the top 10 for several keywords on their homepage. Their site has no purposeful SEO in it, there is barely any text on the homepage at all and none of the text are the keywords it is ranking for.
On-Page Optimization | | woodchuckarts2 -
Why are http and https pages showing different domain/page authorities?
My website www.aquatell.com was recently moved to the Shopify platform. We chose to use the http domain, because we didn't want to change too much, too quickly by moving to https. Only our shopping cart is using https protocol. We noticed however, that https versions of our non-cart pages were being indexed, so we created canonical tags to point the https version of a page to the http version. What's got me puzzled though, is when I use open site explorer to look at domain/page authority values, I get different scores for the http vs. https version. And the https version is always better. Example: http://www.aquatell.com DA = 21 and https://www.aquatell.com DA = 27. Can somebody please help me make sense of this? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Aquatell1 -
Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Do alt tags count towards on page keyword density?
Hello...I have written a bunch of content for my site using a useful tool called Scribe SEO which recommends keyword density at 5% if I remember correctly. So all my my newly written content is below this level but I am left wondering if by adding alt tags with my chosen keywords I will be considered to be over the limit and cause a red flag? Can anyone clarify this for me please?
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0 -
Missing meta descriptions on indexed pages, portfolio, tags, author and archive pages. I am using SEO all in one, any advice?
I am having a few problems that I can't seem to work out.....I am fairly new to this and can't seem to work out the following: Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂 1. I am missing alot of meta description tags. I have installed "All in One SEO" but there seems to be no options to add meta descriptions in portfolio posts. I have also written meta descriptions for 'tags' and whilst I can see them in WP they don't seem to be activated. 2. The blog has pages indexed by WP- called Part 2 (/page/2), Part 3 (/page/3) etc. How do I solve this issue of meta descriptions and indexed pages? 3. There is also a page for myself, the author, that has multiple indexes for all the blog posts I have written, and I can't edit these archives to add meta descriptions. This also applies to the month archives for the blog. 4. Also, SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links on my blog page (also indexed) and their consequent tags. This also applies to the author pages (myself ). How do I fix this? Thanks for your help 🙂 Regards Nadia
On-Page Optimization | | PHDAustralia680 -
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 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0