Should I bother with branded keywords in my onsite SEO improvements?
-
Someone recently told me that using branded keywords extensively in your copy and titles may be unnecessary so long as you have a substantial catalog of back links containing keyword rich anchor text. Can I take this to mean I can privilege non-branded terms over branded in my onsite SEO efforts?
-
I think Mike has it right. The short answer is that you want both branded and non-branded signals. You should prioritize branded vs. unbranded based upon your brand, the marketplace for the products or services you offer, and how people research and shop for what you're offering.
As for on-page title conventions, I like:
unbranded term | call to action | brand
or
unbranded term | brand | unbranded/call to action
Just some general guidelines.
-
The way I handled it is to have the brand in the root domain and wherever it fit at the end. Otherwise, I used non-branded keywords primarily as organic links generally will give you branded anchor text rather than keywords. You don't want to completely neglect the brand name, but it tends to build itself much more than other keywords.
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 this keyword stuffing or best practice?
I'm a psychotherapist here in California. Its common practice for people to say "counseling and therapy" on their websites. Although the two are technically different, most people consider them to be synonyms. Do you think google would consider this practice to be keyword stuffing? Also, I am making a page for the forms I need people to fill out before they see me. Do you think it is bad to list links to the forms like this:
On-Page Optimization | | joebordersmft
-counseling / therapy intake form
-informed consent for counseling / therapy
as opposed to
-intake form
-informed consent
.....I think this falls under the idea that readability is important. I'm just really struggling because recently google decided my main keywords are things that have very little to do with therapy/counseling.0 -
Build pages to target keywords, or audiences, or both?
I'm building a marketing site for a client that does stage lighting design. They also do commissioned artwork installations, interactive design for tradeshows, etc. Because their work spans multiple industries (concerts, performing arts, live television, television advertising), I'm trying to figure out if their content should be targeting the industry, or the actual services they offer. There seems to be enough search volume to target traffic for specific clusters of keywords, but I think it would be a better user experience to tailor pages towards audiences. Should I lean towards creating pages for services offered ,or potential audiences? (A page for lighting design and one for interactive video displays, vs a page for museum directors and one for agencies) Or both? Thanks for any help!!
On-Page Optimization | | bigwheeler0 -
How does a collapsed section affect on page SEO?
A client recently asked me whether a tabbed collapsed section of text that is expanded (i.e. revealed) when clicked, is an OK thing to do without negatively effecting SEO. I told him that for starters, he may want to rethink why he would want to hide the text in the first place (this is not an FAQ type scenario). The reason has to do with the aesthetic of the page. Anyway, aesthetic aside, any thoughts on whether a collapsed (hidden from view) negatively affects on-page SEO? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | stephanwb
Stephan0 -
Optimizing for two keywords
Hi there, my question is: I need to optimze two pages related to almost the same concept but different orientations. One keyword is "emocional intelligence development" and the other word is "emocional intelligence workshops" I can't mix the two pages in one unique page due to web strucutre reasons. Is it possible to optimize each web for each keyword independently although they have the concept emotional intelligence in common? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
SEO for Image only posts
Let's say I have a post where I show 25 different wood textures. I start the post with a small paragraph and then I show several images of wood textures linked to an internal or external page. Since I don't use a text link, then I have to rely on alt tags. It would be very difficult to assign a different alt tag to so many similar images, and I guess there would be a risk of keyword stuffing (walnut wood, oak wood, etc). On the other side, if I assign the same tag to all images, then that clearly is keyword stuffing (alt=wood textures). This is just an example, but it applies to most of my posts. What do you think I should do with the alt tags? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | enriquef0 -
Keyword in url, which way better?
Hello, is there a difference between urls for targeting keyword "brazil tourist visa" fastbrazilvisas.com/tourist or fastbrazilvisas.com/brazil-tourist-visa ? ran the report In-Page Optimization it tells "no keyword usage in url". is there an idea behind that? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Kotkov0 -
Existing good authority LP with multiple keywords, how to optimize for these keywords?
Hi Mozzers, Currently I am optimizing ONpage after I made a report for which keywords the website already ranks in the serps. I was surprised about the numbers of keywords the website ranks in Google. The website ranks for multiple keywords in 1 landing page. They get a lot of traffic, but has a position #5 or #7/#8, onpage grade is for most of the keywords a C or D and lots of them a F, so it's worth to optimize it. How should I do that when the landing page is domain.com/category and the 5 different keywords are partofcategoryname. Should I put all these keywords in the title and landing page body content as the onpage tool recommend me that? I was thinking about the option I described above OR to create a new landing page for the specific keyword each. However, the already ranked landing page has a PA of 38. When starting to build new landing pages is starting to build from PA 0. Anyway, it's definitely I chance to do onpage, I just don't know what I should do since there are 5 different keywords that already ranks for the landing page with good traffic. I want to let it rise in the serps to increase the traffic of course. Looking forward to recommendations! thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Falcopa0 -
Similar Keywords/Different Pages
My question is about my content strategy regarding keywords and page creation. For this example I will use the following keywords: "widget financing" "widget leasing" "widget loans" "thingy financing" "thingy leasing" "leasing loans" "whatchamacallit financing" "whatchamacallit leasing" "whatchamacalit loans" You get the idea. Now I have created a separate page for each of these keywords. There are about 70 keywords and their respective pages. Although all of these describe the same thing I have re-written each page. In other words I didn't use the same content and just substituted the keywords. Each page is roughly 200 to 500 words. I do rank very well for most of these keywords. I would post some of the pages from my site here but I didn't know if that is frowned on. My fear/concern is will I get in trouble in a "post Panda" world. Again, the pages rank very well I just want to be in good graces with Google going forward.
On-Page Optimization | | leaseman0