How are keywords assigned to the On Page Rankings

[jbcul]

Hopefully this isn't a stupid question. I'm new to MOZ Pro so I created a campaign and uploaded about 300 keywords. Our site is an ecommerce site so there are many many products and of course, many pages.

My first On Page Ranking Report has completed and naturally we have pages with scores ranging from A to F.   What I don't understand is this:  for any given keyword, how did that word get assigned to a given page for the purpose of the ranking report?

We may have many pages that may include a given keyword so when I look at a page with a score of F,  I'm sometimes surprised that a given keyword is assigned to a particular page for the purposes of ranking.

Can someone help me understand this architecture?

[jbcul]

Thanks Robert,

It's all good food for thought and I appreciate your taking the time to chime in.  I've just begun working more hours at an eCommerce business and they rolled their own  site so there is much to do in terms of SEO, duplicate content, duplicate title tags etc.  Understanding how the MOZ reports do what they do helps me prioritize my work.

jc

[RobertFisher]

Most likely (and it will take a staffer on Moz to give correct answer) it is how it shows in the rankings. So, often when we create a page our intent is this is the page that will rank for "turnips." We do pages on carrots, celery, and potatoes, but we want our turnips page number one on a search for turnips. But...google doesn't always see it that way. I can laugh today about it but early on in my seo career it drove me to distraction. How in the __ could they think this is what I wanted to rank for?

Also, you can go on the page grader and put in the page you want to grade out for a given term. I understand the limitations given a large number of pages or terms.

Best,

Robert