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
-
Page Title (Meta descriptions) length... how strict are you?
I have just had a conversation with a client... the gist was this... Is it more important to stay under the 55-60 characters OR go over a bit and have the page title make sense and include the clients company name. The same argument for meta description. I have a client insisting on 55-60 length but the keywords are long and if we use the primary keyword phrase the length is 44 if we use the keyword phrase and add the company name it becomes 64. This is with us trimming it a bit. Anyone else discussed this before?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnW-UK1 -
Image naming best practices?
While I have found many good sources of information for naming images for SEO purposes, I'm having trouble finding an up-to-date, exhaustive and authoritative source for image names, alt tags, etc. For instance... Max characters for image name? Max hyphens? How descriptive should you be? "ice-cream-flavors-icon_._jpg" or "ice-cream-flavors.jpg" or simply "ice-cream.jpg" How similar should the image name, alt text and page title be? At what point are you overusing a keyword? Rules to follow? So much more, but you get the idea! Anyone have a good reference or an answer to all things related to images and SEO? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OSD0 -
Breadcrumbs keyword repeats
Hi I have a client project who's developers platform is populating the category part of the breadcrumbs with the header tag. Since these include the pages primary target keywords/phrase they are being repeated in the breadcrumbs increasing the keyword/phrase count on the page as well as repeating/duplicating the sentence. Can this cause problems ? or not because Google knows its not part of the page content/body copy (because its a breadcrumb) ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
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 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | | HochKaren0 -
Title Tags: Does having the singular and plural version of the keyword hurt the ranking?
I'm wondering if there is a duplication issue with having a singular AND plural version of a keyword in the Title Tag. For example: Wood Desk - Wood Desks| Furniture Store Would this help or hurt my ranking for this URL? I can’t find a concrete answer for this under Moz’s “Title Tag SEO Best Practices Page.” Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | jampaper0 -
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 -
Do images work as a H1
Is a h1 tag wrapped image with a optimized alt tag as effective as text wrapped in a h1 tag?
On-Page Optimization | | EAOM0