How do you decide which keywords to optimize first?
-
Let me be very clear, I am not looking for info on how to rank keywords so please do not post about that.
I have a list of keywords I chose and want to rank for, and every group of keywords are related. I was wondering, what is a good strategy for determining which keywords to start with? Should I take one keyword from each group so it looks more natural? Should I do a group of 10 related keywords at a time?
Any ideas? Links? Tips? Resources? What have you done in the past?
-
That's an SEO companies IP
I think if you're looking at level of competition, ppc $ and monthly traffic estimates that can be a good start but you are also part SEO part business consultant so you need to factor in the clients margins and other factors as well if you want to do your job properly in my opinion.
With existing websites there is always this sunk costs bias which I tend to see creeping in as well which affects people's decision making process.
-
Stephanie i will suggest you to make a use of Hittail Keyword tool as it helps you to get a list of keywords that are good and have potential to get you good traffic + are closer to the first page and are easy to rank i use HitTail: The Best Long Tail Keyword Tool beside that if you already have a list of keywords what you can do is worki8ng first on the long tails building links for them to build authority as well once authority is build you are surely going to get a push on your short keywords + till then getting complete advantage of your long tail keywords
-
Go to your google analytics and see if any of the organic search keywords align with keywords on your list.
Run ranking reports on the ones that do. Note pages that are getting search traffic for terms on your list but that are not at the top of the search results.
Review the pages that are receiving the search traffic for those terms to see how well they're optimized.
Start first with the pages that are least optimized, getting traffic, and are on page three, two or bottom of page one of the results. Optimize those pages for most closely aligned keywords
It's called low-hanging fruit.
-
lol thanks
-
I know how that goes :(. Good luck!
-
yes of course. i am just in the process of creating a new strategy though and fixing some of the stuff the person before me messed up.
-
How do you focus on keywords without being spammy? Backlink anchor text? Guest post title tags? keyword proximity to your backlink?
-
Hi Dave,
Yes I am doing something similar, most of these keywords are for different pages. Obviously all the pages will be optimized to the keywords specific to that page, but i am wanting to pick 10 keywords to focus on and rank for with their respective pages. Rather than focusing on everything and building links all at once, I want to focus on 10 at a time, set goals and measure the results, then maintain those results and work on the next 10.
-
Hmm, I seem to take a different approach than most here. I look at each page and see which of my keywords will match up to that specific content. I don't use a top keyword list unless I'm optimizing the homepage. I hardly ever look at competition when placing keywords on the content pages of the site. I ALWAYS look at competition when looking for long-tail blog post type keywords. I used to use 5 different tools to look at competition, but then I realized that you really only need one metric - the allintitle: "keyword." If the allintitle is below 2000 you can rank 1st page with the keyword being furthest to the left in the title tag pretty easily. If it's higher than 2000 the keyword you choose dosn't really matter. It's going to come down to off-site SEO.
-
One strategy is feeding KW terms into Google Trends and figuring out interest levels. Next, figure out the total amount of sites ranking for that string (via quotes in a Google search). Once you have these two data points you can prioritize the string as you have a good indication of interest/competition.
-
Thank you
-
Great answer thank you
-
I would look at what you already have ranking and quality phrases which are coming up in the search and need that extra attention to get them onto the first page and also factor in:
Level of Competition
Potential Traffic / current traffic
The quality of content on site you have to work off of
That would tell you which short tails you have a shot at and if they are out of reach or already ranking, start taking a look at the next most valuable long tail terms
-
Hi Stephanie,
I'd say pulling your analytics data for keywords you're getting long tail traffic for that you're ranking for on the first page (not in top 2 spots) and prioritizing that against your rankings data (whether its from SEOMoz, Advanced Web Ranking etc) using Vlookups in Excel
If you're estimating potential traffic, you can export Adwords keyword data for potential traffic (very rough estimate) to get an idea of what kind of traffic you could potentially be getting
An excellent resource would be http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/#vlookup to start off with.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Ecommerce store on subdomain - danger of keyword cannibalization?
Hi all, Scenario: Ecommerce website selling a food product has their store on a subdomain (store.website.com). A GOOD chunk of the URLs - primarily parameters - are blocked in Robots.txt. When I search for the products, the main domain ranks almost exclusively, while the store only ranks on deeper SERPs (several pages deep). In the end, only one variation of the product is listed on the main domain (ex: Original Flavor 1oz 24 count), while the store itself obviously has all of them (most of which are blocked by Robots.txt). Can anyone shed a little bit of insight into best practices here? The platform for the store is Shopify if that helps. My suggestion at this point is to recommend they all crawling in the subdomain Robots.txt and canonicalize the parameter pages. As for keywords, my main concern is cannibalization, or rather forcing visitors to take extra steps to get to the store on the subdomain because hardly any of the subdomain pages rank. In a perfect world, they'd have everything on their main domain and no silly subdomain. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces0 -
Cannibalization vs long tail keyword dilemma
Hi all. I have a dilemma that I'm trying to work out a solution to and could use some input. We offer a Foreign Qualification (FQ) service for businesses, and thus "foreign qualification" is a strong keyword for which we currently hold great ranking position for our service page. FQ is different in each state, so we have a series of blog posts focusing on the requirements for each state. "Alabama foreign qualification" is one of many long tail keywords (50 states x various phrasings) we're targeting here. The problem is that it's impossible to write 50 blog posts that are not very similar content, since the process is similar, just not identical, in each state. I'm worried about duplicate content penalties here. I'm thinking that I'd want to create a landing page that serves as a hub for each of these blog posts, perhaps with a reference table for the 50 states too, and set the blog post canonicals to this landing page (thereby pushing all state-focused long tail KWs there). However, I don't want to take away ranking strength of the aforementioned service page for the primary keyword. If I do this, and also link the new landing page to the service page using "foreign qualification" as the anchor text, am I more likely to add or take away from the strength of the service page? Thanks for any and all insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkupfer1 -
Keyword rank and redirecting
I'm creating a new amazon affiliate site. I've researched other successful sites. I've noticed that they are ranking for 1000s of keywords, but many of these long tail keywords are redirected back to a main page. I can see how this can reduce the overall total amount of content pages on the site. How are you able to rank for the keyword in the first place if the the page is redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lkomontt760 -
Correct keywords Anchor text for links passing
Hi i have some old pages with more link equity, i m planning to key some bestseller in the main content.. my question is on best use of anchor text, can i use the below for eg: Product name is Chloride Exide Safepower Cs 7-12 12V Sealed Battery so i want to use the key word which is "12v 7ah Battery" in anchor text or buy 12v 7ah battery in Anchor text, will this google consider as spam?? Pls suggest
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Use a language extension or a keyword as an extension?
If it's technically necessary to add an extension to a domain URL... Should I use brand.nl/nl or should I use brand.nl/keyword as the homepage? In my opinion it's better to use the language extension as it is much easier for other websites to link to. The client could make a separate page with content about the keyword. I also think it's much more difficult for direct traffic to access the website with this long URL. Any other thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
What is the best way to take advantage of this keyword?
Hi SEO's! I've been checking out webmaster tools (screenshot attached) and noticed that we're getting loads of long tail searches around a search query 'arterial and venous leg ulcers' - on a side note we're a nursing organisation so excuse the content of the search!!! The trouble is that google is indexing a PDF page which we give out as a freebie:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9868john
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/admin/uploads/5DifferencesBetweenVenousAndArterialLegUlcers1.pdf This PDF is a couple of years old and needs updating but its got a few links pointing to it. Ok so down to the nitty gritty, we've just launched a blog:
http://news.nursesfornurses.com.au/Nursing-news/ We have a whole wound care category in which this content belongs, and i'm trying to find the best way to take advantage of the search, so I was thinking: Create an article of about 1000 words Update the PDF and re-upload it to the main domain (not the sub domain news.nursesfornurses.com.au) Attach the PDF to the article on the blog OR would it be better to host this on the blog, and setup a 301 redirect to this page? I just need some advice on how best to take advantage of this opportunity, our blog isn't getting much search traffic at the moment (despite having 300+ articles!!) and i'm looking into how we can change that. I look forward to your response and suggestions. Thanks! qtY64B10 -
Is a .tv domain good for video optimization?
Does anybody know of any information or resources that point out .tv domains are helpful for video optimization? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Exact keyword URL or not?
Hi all, I have a quick question about the proper use of permalinks. Let's say that I have a website about sports and I want to create an internal page dedicated to shoes. I know that the keyword "shoe" has 15.000 monthly visits, while the keyword "shoes" has 1.000 monthly visits. How do I have to name the internal page? http://www.example.com/shoe or http://www.example.com/shoes (with a final 's')? I would think that by naming the URL http://www.example.com/shoes, the search engine would consider that page for the keywords "shoe" and "shoes", but I am not sure about it. Should I create a URL that only focuses on one specific keyword ("shoe", in this example) or a URL that may encompass more than one keyword ("shoe" and "shoes")? I hope this is clear. Thank you for your time and help. All best, Sal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0