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.
How many keywords max can I optimize each page for?
-
I don't want to over optimize by doing 1 keyword per 1 page, but then if I do more, seomoz on-page tool report doesn't give an A grade for each keyword I optimize.
I usually optimize for max 3 keywords that are very closely related, meaning they use the same words. Ex.
dentist los angeles, los angeles dentist, dentist in los angeles
Am I on the right track or what's your recommendation? Should I create different landing pages for each keyword?
-
Hi, are you talking about the keywords that one can add to a page or words that make up the title and content tags? Thanks.
-
Google does not care if you target 1 keyword or 10. The problem you face is, all other factors being equal, a competitor who only targets one word on a page will always beat a page which targets multiple words.
Ranking in search engines is purely a competition. I recommend you go all out and try to rank #1 (or as high as reasonably possibly). Once you have achieved top rankings for your primary keyword, THEN you can try to get greedy and diversify to multiple keywords.
-
Yes but then how get a good on-page optimization if you are doing like 10 keywords per page? I mean, it's not possible to put 10 keywords on title, h1, url etc. Don't you think Google will question what the site is all about if you go more than 2-3, it's just becomes very difficult.
-
i would quickly add, if you don't have much linkjuice then stick to 2 terms max per page.
-
Below are the results of the keywords you shared (and more) from SEMrush (www.semrush.com).
Based on those results, I would focus on "dentist los angeles". That is tied for first place as the term with the most traffic. Next, you have a choice as to which you place the most importance upon..."dentist" or "los angeles". I prefer your niche rather then your location. Why? It is far more relevant to capture searches for "Dentist ???" then for "los angeles ???".
In competitive niches, you usually need to focus a single keyword target per page. If you focus more then one, you can or will be beat by others who practice more focused SEO on their page.
| Keyword | Δ Volume | CPC | Com. | Results | Trend | |
| dentist los angeles | 1,300 | 14.69 | 0.87 | 19,500,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles dentist | 1,300 | 15.52 | 0.89 | 19,800,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| cosmetic dentist los angeles | 590 | 22.86 | 0.98 | 2,050,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentist in los angeles | 480 | 11.62 | 0.94 | 21,900,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles cosmetic dentist | 480 | 20.84 | 0.90 | 3,940,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles dentists | 480 | 12.24 | 0.85 | 9,600,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentist in los angeles ca | 260 | 10.57 | 0.90 | 8,740,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| los angeles cosmetic dentists | 260 | 11.18 | 0.92 | 3,730,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentists in los angeles | 210 | 10.85 | 0.85 | 9,600,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| dentist west los angeles | 210 | 9.22 | 0.88 | 7,800,000 || | | | | | | | | | | | |
-
There are no hard and fast rules for how many keywords you can optimize each page for. It can be as little as one word to a many as ten or more.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tactical-seo-how-many-termsphrases-should-i-target-on-a-single-page
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
-
Can I replace categories with a static page
Hello there. I want to replace all of WordPress categories with static pages so that users see a well designed and constructed presentation of all the articles within each topic instead of just a long list of excerpts. I've already done this with 2 categories and although it is hard work I can't help feeling it is a much better thing for my users. However, I'm concerned that I am embarking on this project without being totally sure that it makes sense from an Seo point of view, or whether there are any downsides I haven't thought of? My idea is that the WordPress categories are set to noindex and nofollow. Search engines should find all of my static category pages and all of the content within each category will be spidered from there instead. Just to be sure you know what I mean here is a link to a normal category - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/category/consumer/ and here is my static page replacement for it - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/consumer-rights-appliances/ Both pages contain links to all articles within the category except the one generated by WordPress is just a long paginated list, and my replacement is a proper category page, which is hopefully far more useful . Can someone please confirm that there are no downsides to this strategy? 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Snowdune1 -
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
How many hyphens are allowed in page titles or image names?
When I was going through certification, I was told it should be limited to one or two. I was curious if there is a change.
On-Page Optimization | | SeobyKP0 -
Should we rename and update a page or create a new page entirely?
Hi Moz Peoples! We have a small site with a simple site navigation, with only a few links on the nav bar. We have been doing some work to create a new page, which will eventually replace one of the links on the nav bar. The question we are having is, is it better to rename the existing page and replace its content and then wait for the great indexer to do its thing, or perm delete the page and replace it with the new page and content? Or is this a case where it really makes no difference as long as the redirects are set up correctly?
On-Page Optimization | | Parker8180 -
Why are http and https pages showing different domain/page authorities?
My website www.aquatell.com was recently moved to the Shopify platform. We chose to use the http domain, because we didn't want to change too much, too quickly by moving to https. Only our shopping cart is using https protocol. We noticed however, that https versions of our non-cart pages were being indexed, so we created canonical tags to point the https version of a page to the http version. What's got me puzzled though, is when I use open site explorer to look at domain/page authority values, I get different scores for the http vs. https version. And the https version is always better. Example: http://www.aquatell.com DA = 21 and https://www.aquatell.com DA = 27. Can somebody please help me make sense of this? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Aquatell1 -
Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Should you have two separate pages for synonym keywords?
Suppose that you want to rank for two keyword phrases that mean the same thing but are slightly different in spelling. When should you put both keyword phrases on one page versus two pages? What are the pros and cons?
On-Page Optimization | | ProjectLabs0 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0