SEO for compound word derivatives
-
Our company offers services for nonprofit organizations and we are finding that "non profit" and "nonprofit" are both used very frequently in search queries.
I suspect Google will treat the two variations similarly but am looking for something more concrete than my anecdotal experience.
- How does Google treat compound words that are commonly searched for as multiple words?
- Any suggestions on resources or tests to find a concrete answer for "nonprofit"?
-
Google makes semantic level query assumptions by default now- that's part of the function that allows google to suggest queries as you type. To address your question more directly, it depends on the individual terms and whether or not Google is giving complete, partial, or no equivalence to those terms. Non-profit and nonprofit are treated nearly the same in organic ranking- the top results are identical and the remaining results have more variance. You can experiment with this idea and you'll see some of this phenomena.
As for "concrete evidence"- you aren't going to get it. You should study the results of your individual terms' rankings because that's exactly what Google did to weight potential results... at least, it's a part of what they did. They have a vast army of "raters" that look into the relevance of query/results and assign a value to the search engine's success/lack of success. In the end, a load of data is collected in various categorically-structured groups of search terms. Are they using the data attached to these unique categories to craft a more relevant set of results? I don't know if they are, but I find it hard to believe they flush all of that expensive data down the drain just to use an umbrella algorithm to spit out all query results.
In the end, I think you'll find that worrying about the minor difference between the two is wasted time if you're looking for a concrete answer. To avoid the pitfall, stick to a single convention on each individual page, but vary the convention from page to page. When you search one or the other, watch how Google bolds the alternate terms in the list of results.. Compare the 1st page results of the two alternate terms.. are you seeing a pattern? With the other components of SEO on-track, it effectively won't matter at all.
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
-
Does a dynamic meta creation harmful for seo?
Hi guys another newbie question. I have this 20 categories and i want each of it to have a dynamic meta to save time rather than doing it manually. All the 20 categories are name of countries. Target keyword: rent a car (category) Lets say im browsing malaysia category. Meta Title: Find affordable rent a car in malaysia Meta Description: Find affordable rent a car in malaysia only here at website.com, call and book for a car now! Meta Keywords: rent a car in malaysia, malaysia rent a car, affordable rent a car malaysia, cheap cars in malaysia Now i move to another category lets say hongkong, the meta should change dynamically by changing just the name of the category Meta Title: Find affordable rent a car in hongkong Meta Description: Find affordable rent a car in hongkong only here at website.com, call and book for a car now! Meta Description: rent a car in hongkong, hongkong rent a car, affordable rent a car hongkong, cheap cars in hongkong and this goes to all other categories as well. Will it hurt my seo? i mean it could be a form of duplicate content or whatever. Also please correct me of doing my meta, if its correct especially in meta keywords i dont want keyword stuffing as a problem why im not ranking. Thanks a lot guys. Im still in the process of learning the basics 😄
Keyword Research | | geefex6nsy0 -
Parent pages and seo
Hi Im designing a new website and want my seo to be as good as poss. (obviously 😉 ) What the situation with parent pages and urls. My idea is this keyword dog training with a page all about dog training. but then another page would be whistle training. is there any benefit or disadvantage to so it this way www.mysite.com/dog-training/whistle-training/ Thanks
Keyword Research | | TIG990 -
Is KEI metric still commonly used by SEOs
I'd like to ask about the KEI, is it used by now? and is it really matters ? I guess # of results by Google is not a good metric to decide if the keyword is good or not? I'd really appreciate your inputs
Keyword Research | | Yaddly0 -
What is the best way to grow local seo outreach?
For example, I live in new york and most of my keywords, page titles and meta are featured for new york but I want to expand into new jersey. Should I add create new content with those keywords, page titles and meta (blog posts, new pages)? Thats what I am doing but I wanted to see what the pros say. Thanks guys!
Keyword Research | | ayesroc0 -
How do I do SEO for a client who is starting a website that is in a niche with very little to none search traffic?
I am helping a client do On-page optimization and link building. His website is rather like thoughtcatalog.com, where it is a collection of random articles, opinions and anecdotes with no fixed genre. He also has a section devoted to artsy pictures of women. To make things worse, I am in a country (singapore) where the population is small, and the search traffic for his kind of content is minuscule. I have trouble finding out good keywords for him to target and I am considering not undergoing any serious keyword targeting at all (because it will detract from the style of his content). I did a little competitor research, and most of the websites in such a genre do not seem to do any keyword targeting at all! In such a case, how do i continue to help him with SEO? should I abandon keyword research? What should i do to help him earn traffic?
Keyword Research | | Marcus_Wong0 -
Best way to seo optimize before and afgter photos in plastic surgery website
I publish before and after photos of plastic surgery procedures-breast implnats tiummy tuck etc. I use word press. What are best keywords, category labels and tags to get best ranking in before and after photo posts
Keyword Research | | wianno1680 -
SEO research via Google Adwords
I've read several times of this technique for determining if a particular keyword phrase is worth the effort of optimizing for in organic search. In Adwords create an Ad Group with a single exact match keyword phrase and let it run in Adwords until you have enough clicks to measure valid results (I've often heard 200-300 clicks). If you are unable to convert the search term via paid search, the theory goes, it's probably not worth the effort to rank top 3 for that phrase and you should put your efforts elsewhere. Do any of you use this strategy? If so, have you found the results to be pretty consistently accurate? Thanks, Mark
Keyword Research | | DenverKelly1 -
Unusual Words - How to Check what Google Recognises
I want to check which words Google is aware of, I remember Danny Dover talking about "SeoMoz.org" and theorising that Google couldn't understand that SEO was in the URL because it didn't understand that "Moz" was a word and therefore couldn't seperate the 2 words "SEO and "Moz" out. Any ideas, I thought about using Google Instant but as it comes up with "seomoz" when i type in "seom" so am assuming that this detail is taken from a diffrent source. Justin
Keyword Research | | GrouchyKids0