Going after multiple similar keywords, which is the better approach?
-
Let's say I have a page targeting a keyword, "New York Restaurants". There are also several "very close" variations of this keyword which I could also target. Here are the volume estimates:
New York Restaurants - 100
Restaurants New York - 40
Best Restaurants New York - 30
Best Restaurants in New York - 20
etc.Given this, which of the following is the better overall approach?
A) Have one page and work all of these keywords so the page targets all of them. For example here try to weave in "Best" in different ways.
B) Have multiple pages and use 301 redirects. Create one page only targeted at "New York Restaurants" and then create additional pages with the other terms in the URL and Headline, which 301 redirect to my "New York Restaurants" page. This is similar to how wikipedia does redirects, for example "Bourne 2" 301 redirects to "Bourne Supremacy".
Thanks!
| New York Restaurants | 12,100 | Medium | $0.93 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| Restaurants New York | 2,900 | Medium | $1.00 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| Best Restaurants in New York | 3,600 | Low | $0.69 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| Best New York Restaurants | 2,400 | Low | $0.80 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| New York's Best Restaurants | 260 | Low | $0.76 | 0% | -
I agree with Andy.
When thinking of the right strategy for page/content development that all target the same general terms, Google is moving toward thematic indexing, versus keyword by keyword. As long as the collection of target terms on the page is pretty close (just like your example list), the page should rank well for all target terms (and probably some other ones you have not intentionally targeted).
For your meta data, you could introduce a Title that incorporates all keywords such as "The Best New York Restaurants" and a description such as "The best restaurants in New York as voted by local residents. See if your favorite New York restaurant is on the list. Read reviews, submit your vote and more!"
Then use each of your various terms 1-2 times at the most throughout the content. Use your most valuable term in the first 50 words on the page. Make sure the content is written for humans and not spiders. the bots are getting very good at detecting this, so just as Andy said, the user experience should be your focus, not rank.
Also, don't forget to add images and alt text that incorporates some of your keyword targets as well.
Best of luck!
-
You're very welcome.
-Andy
-
Fair enough, thanks!
-
But your keyword variations are for personal gain and to try and get as many people to your site as possible. Wiki's is just to correct what people search for. Trust me, Google will view this practice the same way.
I would never suggest using a redirect for trying to enhance a site in this manner. Use a 301 only to push someone from a page that no longer exists, or that has a genuine reason to be there.
Refer to Googles reasoning on redirects rather than Wikipedia's in this situation.
-Andy
-
Thanks Andy. Quick followup, where do you think Google draws the line on what is a "non-spammy" redirect? From what I can tell it seems like Wikipedia's reasons for a redirect (e.g. plurals, misspellings, etc.) are basically the same as my keyword variations. Is it really that spammy or an "at risk" practice?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirect#Purposes_of_redirects
-
Be very careful about trying to get any sneaky redirects in to a page. If this is found out, Google will come down on you. It is only similar to what Wiki do in the sense that Bourne Supremacy is also known as Bourne 2. What you are trying to do is trick Google into ranking you for more keywords.
The best way to do this is make a site / page about these restaurants, and make it as good as you possibly can. Make it a real user experience so that people want to come come back. Add those extra keywords in there, but do it sparingly, so it doesn't look like it has been written for the search engines.
-Andy
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
-
Long tail there are no long tail keywords....
Hi I am struggling trying to optimise product pages for a product area which doesn't have a lot of specific longtail product related searches. It's 'Lockers' I have more specific sub-category pages which drill down such as - Wire Mesh Lockers Charging Lockers Laptop Lockers Just to name a few, but to drill down more to product names doesn't offer much. Or, in some cases the products are so similar they focus on similar keywords, for example '2 tier metal lockers' applies to loads of different products. Do I do the best I can with product titles, then focus on sub-categories? Love to hear thoughts 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Multiple Landing Pages and Backlinks
I have a client that does website contract work for about 50 governmental county websites. The client has the ability to add a link back in the footer of each of these websites. I am wanting my client to get backlink juice for a different key phrase from each of the 50 agencies (basically just my keyphrase with the different county name in it). I also want a different landing page to rank for each term. The 50 different landing pages would be a bit like location pages for local search. Each one targets a different county. However, I do not have a lot of unique content for each page. Basically each page would follow the same format (but reference a different county name, and 10 different links from each county website). Is this a good SEO back link strategy? Do I need more unique content for each landing page in order to prevent duplicate content flags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shauna70840 -
Keyword Rankings: One keyword dropped, dragging other rankings down. Possible or not?
Hey moz fans, So these week I noticed significant drop in rankings... But what caught my attention is that one specific keyword dropped 18 positions, and all the other just 1-3. Print screen: http://prntscr.com/7fb4g4 Do you think it's possible that the drop of that page, that went 18 positions down, brought the whole domain down? Or is it another cause?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kokolo0 -
Is it best to condense 2 similar category pages?
After reading Rand's great article about building Seo focused pages to serve topics, not keywords (http://moz.com/blog/topics-people-over-keywords-rankings-whiteboard-friday ) I started looking at my site. Question: I have 2 very similar category pages, orginally built to go after similar but different keyword terms. For example, one is: domain.com/blue-rings.html and the other is domain.com/blue-bands.com. (bridal jewelry) "Blue" is just a hypothetical type. At one time I could rank for "blue-rings" and "blue-bands". But with google changes, I think it's better to focus on a general term, right? Not set up similar pages, with same product, for very similar keywords. I'm thinking that having these 2 pages could be actually hurting, as they are competing with each other. Any recommendations? Thanks folks! Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
301 Redirecting Multiple Domains
I have several complete websites with blogs setup for different geo locations and was considering forwarding them all to one domain directly would greatly benefit ranking. The blogs are all linked together and that is where most of the links come from. Would I benefit in 301 Redirecting the domains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
Multiple Versions of Pages on One Website
Hi! My name is Sarah and I work for a brand design firm in Los Angeles. Currently we're working on a website redesign for our company. We have three pages of content that we want to add to the site, but are unsure if we will get penalized by Google if we add all of them since they may come off as too similar? The pages are: Branding
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jawa
Personal Branding
Corporate Branding Does anyone know if our SEO will be penalized for having all three of these pages separately, or should we just focus on Branding, and include Personal Branding and Corporate Branding as sub categories on the page? Thanks! Sarah P.S. I should also say, we will have more than just the three aforementioned pages. It's going to be a big site with around 200+ pages. (Half of them being services, which is where the Branding, PB and CB pages will be located.)0 -
Google and keywords with and without accents. How to approach optimization for both?
This is more of a problem for people optimizing for keywords in spanish, french, german and such. It is well known that SERPs for keywords with and without accents are different. However, I haven't been able to discover how do I make the incorrectly misspelled keywords rank without messing up the site's content. Another fact to take into account is that more than half the searches made in these languages are done without accents because, let's face it, it's just too much work. An example of my specific problem: The misspelled keyword "cursos de ingles" is currently ranking higher than the correctly spelled keyword "cursos de inglés". However, the misspelled keyword "clases de ingles" is not ranking at all and the correctly spelled keyword "clases de inglés" is on the first page. How is this possible? Now, how can I optimize the misspelled keywords to rank higher without misspelling the content on my site? Thank you! Capture.PNG
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 7decode0 -
Keyword Ranking Question
I have recently hired a SEO company to help with our keyword. My question is what are the best tools to use to verify what that are reporting. I can do an unpersonalized search, but I am likely still getting the my local results. I have been using the SEOmoz rank tracker in the past but for some reason it is not able to retrieve results over the past day or so. Are there any other good tools to check ranking for an exact url at the for non-localized, non personalized results? Thanks for the suggestions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fertilityhealth0