Do keywords ride solo or do they have sidecars?
-
"No man is an island", so say brother John Donne. But, my fellow SEO-ers, is the same true of keywords?
That is... deep breath...
If I am ranking as number one for a short-tail keyword, like for example: "fruit salad", does that have any sway on the rankings for other longer tail keywords, like for example, "tropical fruit salad london" or "cheap fruit salad", or is every keyword that we would track in our campaigns completely independent with rankings dependant on work done on that sole keyword?
Thanks for your advice in advance.
-
Just to add a bit to what Joe shared, your "fruit salad" page will surely appear in the organic results for a "cheap fruit salad search". The difference is you are ranking as #1 for "fruit salad" where you may rank well for "cheap fruit salad" or you may be the 10,000th result. There are many factors involved including if the word "cheap" is used somewhere on the page, your competition, etc.
In a perfect world your site will have one quality page dedicated to each key phrases you wish to target.
-
Yes and no.
I imagine search engines don't consider your ranking for other keywords (fruit salad) when calculating the ranking for other keywords (tropical fruit salad london), but it would be difficult and unwise to optimize your site for a head term in a way that wouldn't help keyword variations.
Good optimization for a head term will mostly involve content and optimization that benefits a range of long-tail terms related to your target keyword.
I hope that helps.
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
-
Is Bing also ignoring meta Keywords tags?
Hi, I originally asked about pros (or lack of them) when it comes to using meta keywords tags here https://moz.com/community/q/importance-or-lack-of-meta-keywords-tags-and-tags-in-drupal. It was most likely related to Google, I guess. Is that the same if it comes to Bing as few sources are not sure how this SERP consider using meta keywords tags and people only speculating. Anyone has any kind of "confirmed" responses or experience? Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Optimal_Strategies0 -
Why my keyword rank fell down while I didn't do anything wrong?
Hi! I just got ranking results for the past week, and I am a little bit confused about what I saw. Two weeks ago, I optimized one of my website's page for the keyword "viking appliance repair in Los Angeles" (was #43 before), and one week later I found it on the second page of Google (ranked #21). I continued working on other pages thinking that all I need to do for "viking appliance repair in Los Angeles" to get it ranked even higher is to gain high quality inbound links. But for some reason updated ranking results I got today show this keyword fell down and now ranked #51. Could you please tell me why that might happened? What affected this keyword performance while I didn't do anything with it in between that much?
On-Page Optimization | | kirupa0 -
Grade F page on Moz positions No 1 on Google Keywords not contained
Hi I am trying to understand why a page list in position 1 on Google despite the fact it does not include the search terms anywhere in the page source. One of our sites has been in that position for years has great content and links for the key word terms so how can the other page overtake it and all of the other keywords without so much as a sniff of the keyword in the URL, Meta, content or images. It grades F on Moz! How can I discover the technique that has been used. This really is black art stuff or do Google accept payment from major corporations to list their pages irrespective of content?
On-Page Optimization | | Eff-Commerce0 -
Can you use multiple keywords for on page for ranking?
I understand using a keyword (or phrase) and correctly building that into the site structure (URL, Title Tag, body, etc). So, this question is going to be elementary, but I am starting to question myself as I write content. I have a client, for example, that has a new site and a page for Chocolate cakes. Now the other pages they built out are for Cheesecakes, Cupcakes, etc. So we optimized the Chocolate cakes page with our keyword throughout (Getting an A+ on page content grade). But now they are asking me why they can't be found for chocolate eclairs, chocolate fudge cake, devils chocolate cake, double chocolate cake, etc. My first quick answer is that they should build more pages. But am I doing this wrong?
On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel0 -
Target keywords on homepage or sub page?
Is it better to target main keywords on a site's homepage, or in a sub page. I would usually assume the homepage, but if the domain for the homepage doesn't include the keyword is it better to have a sub page with an exact match URL? For example we target the keyword "abc123" Is it better to optimise the homepage: brandname.com Or create a page to target it: brandname.com/abc123/ And leave the homepage to target brand keywords, but link to the "abc123" page. Whats the best option?
On-Page Optimization | | timscullin0 -
Keyword stuffing - is it true?
Hi, I use On-Page Report Card for this url (the web is in Bulgarian) : http://cholakovit.com My keyword is in Bulgarian - "уеб дизайн" (which means "web design". It shows me that my keywords is: " Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 5875 "I cannot find so many instances of this keyword. Only 13 uses for "уеб" and 10 for "дизайн" in the whole page code. Is there an error in the report?When I search the English version -http://cholakovit.com/enwhich is almost the same but translated in English of the page for the key phrase "web design" it shows only "Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 8"
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Strange Keywords Google Webmaster Tools
Hey, I have a website about "coffee machines". Since a few months I added a vBulletin forum with vbSEO installed. The keywords Google found before I added the forum where highly related to the topic of my website (e.g. "coffee", "machine" etc), which I checked through the webmaster tools. However, I recently checked again and noticed that Google finds mostly keywords like "post", "forum", "thread", "share" etc. with high significance. Those "keywords" only appear on the forum. Now I'm a bit worried since Google states "These should reflect the subject matter of your site." Any advice how to solve that issue? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | netminds0 -
Keyword Ranking Issue..
Hello Guys, I have a small doubt in top ten rankings, i worked for one keyword "Domain Sales" in which my website was ranking in 5th position, but suddently i saw my website no rank in top 100 for the same keyword. Not able to track the what is the problem? Any help..
On-Page Optimization | | itajooba0