Competitive vs. non-competitive keywords
-
Posting this on behalf of a friends at a breast and ovarian cancer support organization...
We're trying to improve our web site's results in search engines. I've been reading up on SEO and learning that it's wise to optimize for more specialized keywords rather than for highly competitive keywords (e.g., "triple negative breast cancer," instead of "breast cancer"). Practically speaking, how does this work when you're optimizing content?
- Does "triple negative breast cancer" need to appear multiple times in the page's content and is there an optimal place on the page where it should appear?
- Do keyword tags actually work, or should we not even bother spending time on adding them? How about title tags and description metatags?
- Will they help with search results? I know that increasing the number of outside links makes a difference, but will it help if I provide links from one page on our web site to another?
Thanks!
-
1. Yes it needs to appear, but not several times. It is best if it appears in a title tag near the top of the page
keyword
.
2. Keyword tags only tell your competitors what keywords you are targetting. They have no weight for search engines anymore. Title tags and description tags help with click through rate(CTR). When a user sees a compelling title with a good description in the search results, they click. Titles have some weight on SEO.
3. Internal linking will help, but make sure they make sense to the user and are not just there for the search engines. It's pointless to have a website that only makes sense to a search engine and confuses the people who find it via the search engine.
-
The keyword should appear in the content but it does not have to be multiple times. First and last paragraph is sufficient.
Dont worry about meta keywords but do use titles and descriptions as these are what users see in the search engines. Dont duplicate these across pages.
Internal linking will improve the structure on your site as well as a sitemap.Check out the seo moz beginners guide as everything should be in here http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
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
-
Pages Fighting Over Keywords
Hi Guys, Just after some general advice. Since manipulation of keywords through links is no longer a feasible way of ranking these days, I was wondering how people got round the issue of pages bouncing for the same keyword or Google deciding that a blog post is a better signal rather than your service page. For instance if you are doing local and national search, how do you stop the local keywords ranking for national pages, without diluting the local signals. I have some ideas:- stronger internal linking to the page review content But obviously redirects or canonical won't be a good solution as I still want these pages to exist in their own right. Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Usage of keywords in URL
Hi everyone, I'm trying to optimize our website and I'm not sure what's ideal for our URL structure. We have two products: one of them is focused on B2C & the other one on B2B.
Technical SEO | | Klouwers
Our homepage is focused on the B2C product. For our B2B product, I'm not sure what's ideal. The URL for our 'homepage' of the B2B product is ourdomain.com/software. We have different target groups for our B2B software, and therefore different pages on our website. Which URL would be best to use for the keyword personal trainer software?
1. ourdomain.com/software/personal-trainer-software
2. ourdomain.com/software/personal-trainer0 -
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
What can I do to stop ranking for a keyword that has nothing to do with the companies website?
A website that we maintain keeps ranking for the keyword 'homeless shelter'. The company is UTILIS USA and they produce heavy duty shelters for military personnel. They have nothing to do with homeless shelters but continue to receive traffic concerning the phrase.
Technical SEO | | ReviveMedia0 -
Redirecting non-www to www
Hi all, I recently ran my first diagnostic test with SEOmoz and was alarmed to find my company's site has over 8,000 cases of duplicate content, virtually all of which can be attributed to separate domains, www vs. non-www. So after some research I found that this can be solved easily using .htaccess. However I found a warning on another site that if my site has already been indexed by Google without the www, there could be side effects like a loss in PR. Can anybody tell me how to find out whether my site falls into this category? I do have access to Google Webmaster tools but I can't find anywhere that tells me how my site's been indexed. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | rylaughlin0 -
Google Webmaster redirect vs 301 redirect
OK assuming a client's website has the right tracking script (hopefully analytics isn't effected by this issue), ... what happens if the htaccess file has a 301 redirect to the www-address, but within Google Webmaster Tools, the address chosen to crawl by Google is the non-www address? How will Google handle and which address takes precedence in this situation? _Cindy
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
Is this keyword strategy totally wrong?
I have a Driving School website www.1stclassdriving.co.uk. The site is structured geographically with one page per Area
Technical SEO | | Brian_Worger
(post code) and one page per Driving Instructor. There are links from each Area page to the instructors
working in the Area. The principal search keyword that I want to optimise on is
"Driving Lessons" The thinking was to target each individual Area page for
"Driving lessons in xxx" where xxx is the particular geographic area
and each particular Instructor to "Driving Lessons in yyy" where yyy
is the main town . The ideal would be that a search on "Driving
Lessons" would pick up the root page - search on an area, say "Driving
Lessons in Croydon" would pick up the Croydon area page and a search on a
town, say "Driving lessons in Mitcham" would pick up the Instructor
that covered that town page. However having read Rebeccas Keyword research guide I am
concerned that this strategy is wrong because of the volume of pages that use
"Driving Lessons in xxxx". Does this fall foul of "Keyword cannibalization" ?
and if so what is the best way of being able to achieve our objective?0 -
Using Thesis as blog platform vs. Tumblr
I read a lot of advantages by using Thesis as a platform for blogging, but I like the themes and other plugins from Tumblr. Are there equivalents at Tumblr to the Thesis benefits so I can go a head and go with Tumblr?
Technical SEO | | HyperOffice0