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.
Optimizing for another keyword than the menu name
-
Hi
I would like to hear if someone could help me decide whether or not it is important regarding SEO that the menu name is the same as the keyword we want to rank for.
The site is a static site and one of our most important keywords.
To give an example. Our menu name is "cars" and we want to rank for "cheap rental cars".
-
My question was probably not specific enough - sorry.
Example:
Today our top menu could be: "Automobiles" (which is the keyword, that we want to target) But "Cars" is shorter and easier to use, and looks better. There we would like to change it.
Below this we have several pages with: Automobiles inHow much value does it have to have the exact keyword in the main menu of the site?
- the menu is on all pages on our site.
We have several other internal links with anchortext "Automobiles" linking to the page.
-
Hi Kenneth,
Note: it is less important to have the major keywords in the menu....
Think about long tail keywords: if they were all in menu (such as: vacation-houses on the beach) then we would need all the screen only for menu.
Think about targeting the text more closely to the targeted keyword, think about if they seek for cheap car rentals, when they end up on your landing page, does it really provide the right information for them? After you optimize your text and deliver the products on this landing page you are half way done with the optimizing.
Don't try to stuff the text with keywords, use synonyms, make it more readable, provide information.
I believe that the menu name does not influence as much as the content on the specific page; so my advice: work on content more, and worry less on the menu name (that should be used for users and not robots).
I hope that helped,
Istvan
-
If, by menu name, you mean title tag, it is important. If you mean you have a menu with a Main Tab = Cars and below that are several choices: Expensive Rental Cars, Moderate Rental Cars, Cheap Rental Cars, the main tab being cars will not hurt you.
Look at the url : YourSite.com/cars/cheap-rental-carsIf that is how it looks, I see no problem with it. If it looks like this YourSite.com/cars and the thing you want to rank for on the page is cheap-rental-cars that by itself will not help but won't kill you. I would use the cheap-rental-cars and have a title tag that says Cheap Rental Cars | YourSite.com.
Hope this helped you out.
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
-
Meta keywords
should every site have meta keywords or is this not used anymore? I don't use yoast and prefer rank math but there is nowhere to insert it. when I look at moz bar it shows meta keywords as a field so maybe it is important...
On-Page Optimization | | Mosaj0 -
Keyword Stuffing
Working on optimizing my e-commerce website. We have managed to obtain very good ranking on most keywords that we use directing to different products. However, there is one that ranks very low, and Moz alerts that keyword stuffing might be one of the reasons. While I have edited the content to include less of the same keyword on that particular page, the links to different products that contain the same keyword from the same page (accessories and related products) I believe are increasing my count and it seems to be working against me. \ Should I start eliminating some of these links so as to eventually obtain a better ranking? any help would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | NewVape0 -
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
Snippet showing as domain name with apostrophe, instead of page title when searching for the domain name.
Hi, We have an issue with one of our websites, with the snippet dispaying differently in Google serps when searching for the domain or the website name rather than a search term. When searching for a search term, the page title shows as expected, but when searching for the site by the domain name either with or without the tld, it shows the snippet as the domain name with an apostrophe at the end. Domain is subli.co.uk Thanks in advance for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | K3v1n0 -
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 -
Avoid Keyword Dilution
Hi
On-Page Optimization | | ulefos
I am struggling with keyword dilution, and I don't understand what I need to do to change.I have read it but don't get it. This is the explanation - You want to target each keyword with a single page on your site, so modify the anchor text of this link so it is not an exact match. The only thing that I see is the title and the anchor text the same and the image alt also the same is that what the problem is here is the page I am trying to sort out for the keyword kiln dried logs.
Thank you0 -
Keywords in Navigation
Hi, What is best practice for main navigation links with regards to use of keywords in them. For example is it best to using the phrase 'Pricing", "Website Pricing" or "Website Design Pricing" To me 'Pricing' is more appropriate because to the user they know they are on a website designer's site so what else would pricing be for right?! Furthermore you use less 'real estate' on the nav bar! There is on page text around the site which has links to "see our website design pricing" etc so I assume that is perhaps a more natural place to include that phrase? Look forward to your insights 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | NeilD0 -
Transferring authority from one domain to another
My dilemma For example: If I have a website ranking at number 11 for (Keyword) and there is a site named www.(Keyword).com ranking at number 12 for (Keyword), if I were to buy this site and redirect to my own site, would this be at all beneficial? Any advice would be much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | CMoore850