Ranking for Synonymous Terms (ie. lawyer & attorney)
-
To accomplish ranking for synonymous search terms, are we better off just letting Google make the connection? Should we put the secondary synonymous term in our page titles? Is it best practice to create a completely unique landing page for the term? Not sure how to go about this. Some examples would be "miami lawyer" or "miami attorney", "obgyn" vs "gynecologist" etc. Any help on this would be much appreciated!
-
I stick with one page, and use the terms interchangeably within the text itself and use the more frequently searched word as the keyword in urls and title tags.
-
Thanks Chris, that's the way we've been doing it to this point (just going with the primary search term that has the most search volume) but I definitely agree with you that Google HAS to be moving in the direction of showing search results for synonymous terms.
-
I agree with Chris. Stick with one page. It would be worth using synonyms where appropriate in the content of your pages though.
Peter
-
When I first started here, the previous SEO company employed a double strategy. We had urls that were blah, blah, attorneys-lawyers and title tags that were attorneys-laywers, and text that was attorneys-lawyers. Except for the urls, I changed it just because I thought it looked bad. I decided to just pick one and work on it. It has worked out fine. Overall our rankings have improved, and will only continue to improve as google does, as stated by Chris above.
Without question, there is a difference if you decide to pick one of the words over the other. The one you pick and optimize for will rank higher. It does for us on everyone of those keywords, however, it is slight. Most often it is 1-5 places. Granted, that can be the difference between being on the first page and the second, so I guess "slight" is relative.
However, my life has been much easier once I decided I didn't want to write for both attorney and lawyer, and just picked one. My content is more user friendly, my rankings went up and I don't have to worry about duplicate content.
Also, if you are looking long term, (and this part is pure conjecture) I could see Google eventually penalizing a site that has one page for Miami Attorney and one page for Miami Lawyer, (because that can't be that substantively different) or at the very least, not allowing both pages to rank. Thus, you would have spent a whole lot of time for, at most, modest gains.
Hope this helps!
Ruben
-
Ricky,
While Google's working to unify rankings for synonymous terms, synonyms can often have slightly different uses and meanings--especially regionally. At the least, be sure to investigate if that's the case with your terms in your region. You're likely to get a bit more traffic if you have separate pages ranked at the top for each term but whether the value's there for you or not is a different matter. The more advanced Google gets, the more difficult it is to know what differences are required in the two pages in order to differentiate them and get them to rank for the separate terms. Personally, I think it's better to choose one or the other as part of your branding and just go with it.
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
-
Can an external firewall affect rankings?
For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic. Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes? Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | samgold0 -
Website rank 5th position than bounce
Hello A website client won't rank dor branded keyword (site name) for several months, i optimize onpage seo, did some backlinks, the DA jump to 8 (from 1). Yesterday the website rank for branded keyword 5, than 4, tomorrow can't found it.
Technical SEO | | Zidani0 -
Amp version of website
Hello & thanks for reading its maybe the monday morning blues but i have two versions of a website - www.gardeners.scot and www.gardeners.scot/AMP/ the pages on the amp version have canonicals pointing to the "normal" website Should the links on "www.example.com/AMP/" point to the amp website or the normal website? what are your thougths?
Technical SEO | | livingphilosophy0 -
ATG & Endeca Integration & SEO implications
Does anyone have any first hand experience or must have recommendations around ATG & Endeca integration? I am somewhat familiar with ATG and the Oracle ATG guide, but if anyone has any specific SEO considerations they'd like to share? i.e. jumpservlet and SEO URLs Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ACNINTERACTIVE0 -
Changing URL - Ranking Disappeared?
Hi All, I named a page URL /plectrums/ within the back end framework. But then decided to change it to /personalised-plectrums/ I resubmitted a GWT sitemap and 301 redirected plectrums -> personalised-plectrums My ranking for personalised plectrums has disappeared and has not come back does anyone know why this is? Or is there something I have missed? Lewis
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Videos for SEO & Profits
Hello, I'm in the middle of developing a website that will be a tutorial site for SEO, http://universityofseo.com. My plan is to do video tutorials & blog posts to help entry-level SEOs and SMB Owners to help them become familiarized with SEO through quick and easy to watch videos. I eventually want to turn this into a revenue stream through advertisements. I want to know for both SEO and profit reasons, if I should host the videos on youtube and then embed them on my site, or do something like Bits on the Run / Whistia and put ads in the videos that way? I'm not overly obsessed with monetizing the site, but it would be nice to do it, but first and foremost i'm concerned with optimizing the site, having great and actionable content, then monetizing it. I'd appreciate any help on this matter, Zach
Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell0 -
301 & backlinks
Apologies if my question sounds like a school Maths lesson 😉 If you have 2 sites: Site 1) is linked to by sites A,B & C Site 2) is linked to by sites X,Y & Z You then 301 redirect site 2 to site 1. Most of the juice from site 2 (obtained from links X,Y,Z) should be passed over to site 1. But what if site 2 is linked to by the same sites A,B,C as site 1 instead of X,Y,Z. Since both sites have exactly the same links will the same, less, or any weight be passed over by the 301 redirect? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc1 -
Sub-Page Ranks for a Main Keyword
A sub page now ranks for my main key word (the file name is exact match to the key word) it completely replaced my index page in rankings. Would 301 redirecting the sub-page to my index page (which is more informative and has a whole lot more links pointing towards it) be a good idea or vice versa? Or would optimizing that page (the sub page) be the best way to go (the sub page doesn't have single inbound link pointing to...). This happened about a week ago. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Benj7070