Onpage Optimisation Changes
-
Hi Guys,
I love the SEO world I really do, but sometimes it can be quite confusing and even after 11 years and a few clients under my belt, I still have head-scratching days and this week has been one of them.
It seem the rules surrounding onpage optimisation of keywords have changed quite a lot this year. Whilst, I understand blatantly sticking to a 3% keyword density rate for your keywords, hasn't been good practice for a while, and with RankBrain and machine learning, we have to pay attention to semantic words and phrases but it seems there is a new set of rules I haven't learnt yet.
For example I had a client I was working on and we we noticed although they were ranking quite high for a keyword phrase, it wasn't actually mentioned in the text at all and so by adding it in a place it made sense, we should lift this and other keywords. Here is what happened, within a week their main keyword moved down from 1 to about 6 and the keyword that wasn't added moved from 4th to 23rd. After scratching my head and then going to full panic mode, I calmed down and looked at competitors, they didn't mention the word in the content either and so I decided to remove the one word we added to the text. The rankings came back overnight (well after doing a fetch as Google and getting to reindex). So if keyword density now is clearly NOT a metric to go on, how do we know the sweet spot? Do we use something like Ryte and make sure we using semantics and keywords within the average of the top ten? Does what Google deems important depend on the niche?
Not a right or wrong answer here, just interested in your thoughts
Regards
Neil
-
Hi All,
I will just give you all a quick update. I am more confused then when I first started!! I am telling my team from now if it's on the first page already we don't touch the keyword. Of course other keywords may also be trying to rank for the same page on page 2, so it's going to be a tricky one,
I have just done a quick experiment on a ecommerce page the keyword was on page 6, the changes I did yesterday made it go to page 7, further tweaks made it go to page 9!! This is mental! I am using Ryte to make sure semantics are mentioned, maybe using this tool and getting the averages that each keyword and related keyword is mentioned, is not the best idea. But without a guide how do we know what to optimise for?
I will give it a week as Nigel above said and see what happens. At least I know resetting to their original values before we started for any keywords that have declined will work.
Regards
Neil
-
No problem Neil, on-site SEO often makes me feel the same! It's easy to go from "following best SEO practices" to "over-optimization", and constant testing, checking results, and striving to always be learning what works today is essential. Best of success!
-
Hi Neil
That's really interesting and I have seen similar things happen. Google is determining user intent from each keyword and phrase typed into search, so the results will vary considerably with each semantic search. There is also a possible a stuffing issue, not just between identical keywords but semantics that we may need to consider. If adding that single word overplayed the whole piece, then the probability is that you were trying just that bit too hard. The whole thing has become very flaky and I have seen wild movements up and down which then appear to find a level after a week or even two.
For some clients I have seen wild movements for pages I haven't even touched - literally from position 5 to 83 and then back again within a week. Whatever Google is doing is unsettling - wrong even. It's hard enough for experienced SEOs but if you are a website owner with no experience of SEO it must be rather disheartening to experience the madness and start scratching your head looking for an explanation when there really isn't one.
-
Wow, so what you're suggesting is not only does keyword density seem to be applicable, but that it varies depending upon the specific keyword?
Wow! If that indeed turns out to be true after the conclusion of your further analysis, that's sounding to potentially be a headache for the SEO world when it comes to onsite lol!
-
Hi Nicholas,
Thank you for making me feel like I’m not going completely mad! I’m running an experiment now on a client site looking at a mixture of average keyword density of top ten for a keyword + searcher intent using sematic words that are in common with the top ten.
Remeber the days, you did the onpage month 1 and then built 300 ba each month! No skill, but easier times!! Haha!!
Regards
Neil
-
Very interesting situation Neil, it sounds like you did the right thing with looking at what the competition was doing, and then just making one change at a time, while using the Fetch & Render tool in GSC to see results faster.
While keyword density is a factor, Google is constantly trying to figure out the "searcher intent", and it is possible that adding this keyword in that seemed like a no-brainer changed Google's perspective of the page's "searcher intent". Just spitballing here of course, as there a ton of potential on-site factors at play. It sounds like you are on the right mindset though and I wouldn't totally throw keyword density out, just focus more on "content depth" and helping solve the searcher intent.
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
-
Changing url (permalink) structure of website??
Currently I'm working on SEO of one website www.mocomi.com. I want to change url (permalink) structure of entire website which has more than 5000 pages. Currently website have structure of http://mocomi.com/tenali-raman-the-kings-condition/ Which I want to change it to http://mocomi.com/fun/stories/tenali-raman/tenali-raman-the-kings-condition/ Likewise I want to change entire website permalink url structure to make site architecture more SEO friendly. Which means I'am going to add only categories & subcategories before actual link. Kindly guide with following questions which I need to move forward with this step. How much is it worth to change URL structure? Checklist or factors I need to consider while making this decision? Is it a good practice to change URL's of entire website at once or Should I change it in Parts? How much time it takes google to rank those urls again? Which are the best practices to do so?
On-Page Optimization | | Mocomi1 -
Value of URL Changes
Hi Guys, I have a question. Each product listed on my webstie has product number like /product.php?id=3624. After I spent many hours with MOZ, I figured out that this approach is wrong and I should use the product name as URL to achieve better SEO performance. Now I am planing to change the URL generating algoritm but should I do it for existing products. Some of them have already been linked to external websites. I am thinking to create mirror URLs but this may cause rather damage on my website. Do you know what is the right answer? Best, Tony
On-Page Optimization | | Threeding.com0 -
Building an optimised friendly website
We are in the process of having a new website built and was wondering what factors do we need do we need to instruct our web company to include, at the build phase, to ensure that we can easily optimise it for SEO purposes. They have designed us a previous site that has excessive duplicate URLs and they haven’t given us access to the code so we can’t add 301 redirects etc and would like to avoid this in the future. I look forward to hearing from you
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley1110 -
Getting Google to see major changes?
I am making some big changes to my site based on Moz's advice. How can I get google to see all of them? I submitted them to Google Webmasters. Is that the best thing to do? How long until Google updates all my pages?
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Penalty for Changing Home Page Title Tags
Hey Mozzers I'm certain of the answer to this question, however I wanted to get some input from the experts in Moz-land to hopefully provide some additional perspective. I recently disagree with a client's assertion that there is some penalty Google levels for changing the title tags of your home page. Now, I understand changing the title tags can influence serp rankings, however, is anyone aware of some penalty Google levels for simply changing the title tags? Most of what I've read and experienced has people changing them all the time without some phantom penalty. It seems to me a problem of correlation = causality, in that people often attribute a drop to an action that may not have actually been the cause. Anyway, if you have any particular insight on this top I would appreciate it greatly. thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Are there any SEO benefits changing the default home page filename (index.htm) to a keyword rich filename
II'm a newbie. I have a website using the default home page filename: index.htm. I have total control over the web server. I was wondering whether I can get any SEO improvements for my main keyword if I change the default filename with a filename that contains the main keyword, like our-main-product.htm (doing the 301 redirect and changing the server search order, of course)?
On-Page Optimization | | Grafimart0 -
How quickly should I change/edit sites to avoid potential over optimization penalty?
Regard today's White Board, I'm wondering how quickly one should start changing title tags, page content, footer links, etc. on sites? I operate a few different sites and some of them definitely have things that need to be changed. Would it be weird or trigger something in Google if all the sites were changed in 24 - 48 hours? Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | jdrrocks0 -
SEO Change/Version Control
Hi. Can anyone suggest apps that might be applied for SEO change/version control? I've tried using Excel and Word in the past but both fall short when dealing with multiple client sites. Nothing suitable pops up so far. Specifically I want to be able to log any on-page changes that might impact SEO for historical analysis and possible roll-back (manual) eg change date, page title, headings, url, anchor text, alt image txt, body copy etc. The ability to have one view that can be filtered in various ways including by client and by url would be ideal. Maybe this is something SEOmoz is considering for Pro campaign management? Surely there's demand... Thanks Andy
On-Page Optimization | | Bluesnapper0