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.
Exact keyword match for meta title and h1 what is best practice?
-
How exact should my meta titles and H1 one be compare to the keyword you wish to rank on.
Eksample. When I do a research with google AdWords the keyword tool shows me:
260 monthly searches for house for rent Hua Hin
140 monthly searches for Hua Hin house for rent
70 monthly searches for House for rent in Hua Hin
The first two includes the exact same 5 words while the last one includes the stopword "in".
That google have different search volumens for these very smilair search queries tells me that small differences matters. So how does that effect the way i shoulf write my:
a)meta titles
b)H1
I feel I get better sentences often by reordering the keywords etc.
“Top tips on how to rent house in Hua Hin” Instead of “Top tips if you want a house for rent in Hua Hin”
Do you use stop words like “in” hua hin. (only used in 25% of the searches queries)?
Also would it matter if i write a plural form of a keyword instead of a singular etc propeties and sted of property?
My goal is to write easy to read and unique content but i feel i can make exact matches if required with out compromising to much.
-
I agree with you Massimiliano,
Overall that is a great strategy and yes, just because they get more volume does not mean they are the best keywords. Different keywords are used at different stages of the buying cycles. In this case I was just telling Tamir how I would choose the order from those specific combinations of the same 5 words. Assuming he has done his research and those are the keywords he is going to target.
Getting traffic is one step in the game, converting the traffic is another important step as well.
Best Regards,
Joe
-
targeting the keywords with the highest volume can be misleading, they are not necessary the best converting keywords, and since usually everyone prefer to shot at the biggest target competition is fierce
I am not saying it's wrong, but I would be more selective and choose keywords on the base of a variety of factors.
-
Hello Tamir,
Realistically to write great content you want to use them all in different variations, singular. plural ect. I would pick the highest volume order of the keywords, in your case: 260 monthly searches for house for rent Hua Hin.
I would use this combination as the url, Begining of description as well as the H1 tag. I would then write some very thoughtful and informative content and add those other variations on the page in a natural flowing conversational way that sounds like natural talk when you read it out loud to yourself. You want to focus on the highest volume words and also build the others in as well so you may rank well for more than 1 combination of those keywords.
Here is the link to rand
s very informative article about keyword targeting: A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO. It
s a must read for sure !http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization
Hope that helps,
Joe
-
I have seen google algo rank the same page for very similar phrases where the keywords where just changing places, but it's not "always" doing it. You can help him learn that page is a good fit for both queries with the copy of the page.
google knows about synonyms and does often show same or very similar SERP for different keywords which are considered to have the same "exact" meaning and usage in language. But in my experience does treat plurals in a different way.
I would use exact match for title and exact match for h1 if it make sense, but avoiding using unnatural language.
Unfortunatelly SEO is a land where certainity is scarce, and I would recommend testing different versions to find out what works best in your case.
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
-
titles length, URL length and meta descriptions on a subdomain effecting SEO on main domain?
Hi all, I am currently evaluating areas for optimization on my main domain. When doing this, Moz has identified multiple titles and urls that should be shortened and missing meta descriptions on my subdomain (a help center of sorts). As far as I am aware, we have not set up any "no-index" rules for this subdomain. Are these items affecting SEO on my main domain? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | annegretwidmer
Kasey0 -
How to generate an automatic title and meta description for lots of pages
Hi, I'm working on a big website that will have new pages every month. I would like to find a plug-in or something free to generate automatic title and meta description for futur new pages. Thanks you for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | Maely0 -
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
How unique should a meta description be?
I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change: to where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | abisti21 -
Bold & Italics Best Practice?
Hi All, Does anyone know the official best practice use of bold and italic fonts? If I have a long page of text- 800 words + I usually bold a few sentences to allow the user to be able to read only the bold on the page, and still make sense of the article. By reading all the bold it will kind of make sense and the user gets the point of the article. This wasn't really done for SEO purposes, but so the reader gets to the bottom of the page in a reasonable amount of time, and gets all the key points and facts of the article. I was advised not to do this and to just bold/italic the keyword/phrases the article was written to rank for. I would like to know anyone else's opinion/strategy on using bold/italics effectively and within best practices. What's the official word? Thank you for your help. Ian
On-Page Optimization | | cookie7770 -
Contact Form On Homepage - Best Practices
How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.
On-Page Optimization | | TheSEODR0 -
Duplicate meta descriptions
Hi all, I'm using Yoast's SEO plugin and when I run a On Page report card here on SEOMOZ it says there are 2 descriptions tags I've been trying to fix this but can't (I'm new!) Anyone any ideas on this? Thanks Elaine
On-Page Optimization | | elaineryan0 -
Is it ok to use encoded special characters in meta titles?
I've read blog posts stating that encoding special characters in title tags is both ok and not ok. Any definitive answer out there? Do the extra characters from adding encoding count towards the total number of characters that Google displays in SERPs? Or do they just count as one character?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0