How to choose a Keyword
-
I searched around for this answer first but got information overload.
I write a photography blog and tonight I will put up a post of photography from around Jiyugaoka Train Station. I will probably call the post Around Jiyugaoka Station or Around Jiyugaoka or something like that. I like in Jiyugaoka (a part of Tokyo) so I have other posts that I have keyworded for Jiyugaoka.
What is the best way to determine what is the best derivative of 'Jiyugaoka Station' to choose for the best traffic? I assume I could enter them in to manually into the Keyword Analysis but is there is easier way that would give recommendations?
-
Great responses guys.
Tom - Thanks for the very complete answer. What I am looking to do is drive exposure for my blog. I am not really interested in commercial work as a photographer but want to continue to drive a lot of traffic to my blog. Great article on your site by the way.
-
Hi David
My first question would always be: what do you want the traffic to provide you? Is it merely for exposure to your work (which looks ace by the way), or do you want it specifically to convert?
If it's just to drive traffic and general awareness of the blog, it frees up the keyword choice. If you want to get people to hire you on a freelance basis, then of course you need to think of the commercial viability of the keyword. For instance, Jiyugaoka Station may not be too commercial, as you're not targeting people looking for a service, whereas "photographers near Jiyugaoka Station" (just as an example) would be. This advice is a bit off topic, but always worth keeping in mind.
The keyword difficulty tool in Moz is a great tool, but I'd combine it with a few other tools. Use the Google Keyword Tool to get a rough idea on monthly search volume for your selected keywords (remember to select [exact] match) and see which keywords have the most search volume - which in turn would probably mean more users to your site should you rank for the term.
The Keyword Tool will also give you a few keyword variations when you enter your keywords - these may also provide some good ideas of other keywords you could target. Similarly, Ubersuggest is a great free tool that does the same sort of thing.
Once you have a list of keywords with decent search volume, then I'd use the Moz difficulty tool. The tool will show you how strong the websites are ranking for that keyword and, somewhat proportionatly, you'll get some idea of how much SEO effort you'd need to do to overtake them. It might be the case that one keyword has a search volume of 800 per month, but looks quite difficult to rank, whereas a 450 per month term looks very easy indeed. In this case, based on your time, knowledge and budget, you can work out which keyword you'd be better off optimising for.
Hope this helps in some way and if you have any interest I wrote a blog post on a relatively similar subject last week: www.sowhatmedia.co.uk/small-traffic-big-business/
-
You can use Google's adwords tool or keyword planner but they don't get granular enough to include "Jiyugaoka train station" keywords. But what you do is organize several of your posts around the general "Jiyugaoka" topic and link to the general topic page from the train station, restaurants and maps pages (for example) with broad "Jiyugaoka"-type terms and from that category page, link out to the more specific pages with "Jiyugaoka train station" and "Jiyugaoka restaurants" anchor text.
It takes balancing to create your category pages at a high enough level that you don't end up with way too many categories that they become overwhelming to the user and not so many that they become too broad to rank for. That's the tough part about keyword research. Do broad research early on and map out your site's keyword direction to give yourself a strategic direction for your site.
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
-
Number of keywords for single page website
Hello, i have a question about keywords in Single page website. For how many keywords should i focus in single page website? For example: In my industry are important 2 different keywords - cabinet making and **made to measure furniture. **Should i focus on both keywords or its better to pick better keyword and focus only for that one (of course including different forms of that word and so on). Thank you for help.
Keyword Research | | Reyzer1 -
Keywords with different spelling depending on country.
Hello, My product sells in both USA and UK, childrens sleepwear. I am not quite sure whether my onsite optimisation should be for "pajamas" or "pyjamas", or do I need both terms? Can someone please advise the best option? Thanks Astrid
Keyword Research | | Lilala_Kids0 -
Keywords with no search volume
Hi there! What are your thoughts on optimizing pages for keywords that have no search volume (using the Keyword Planner)? I'm not sure it should be done, since optimizing for keywords that no one searches for is kind of useless, right? Or should I do it hoping that sometime in the future the keyword will have a surge on searches? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | sararufo0 -
The same keyword on multiple pages, but not all (combined with other relevant keywords) for products.
Hi Guys, I want to get an opinion/advice on this. My client has a site that have all their products (I am working on expanding the product descriptions, benefits and how they differ from each other) listed and I just want to know if I can use the term 'gear oil' for example on multiple pages as one of the keywords. The product range (among others like transmission fluid and anti-freeze) is gear oil (with the different types of gear oils available described) and I can't really change what the product is. I do have different variations (such as gear lubricant, automotive gear lubricant, car gear oil etc.) but will it do damage if I use the same keyword (like gear oil) on multiple pages (along with another relevant keyword that does not involve the words gear oil)? Any help on this will be greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | annabel.schoeman0 -
Keywords/URL
Greetings! I've read previous posts on this topic, but wondering if something has changed recently...On the on-page grading, the following was suggested:Use Keywords in your URL - high importance - easy fix _(In the past it has read difficult fix). _Could it be as easy as creating a new page with the name in the url, then redirecting to it? My site is www.enchantingquotes.com and the keyword that brings in virtually all of business is "wall quotes". I've read in the forum this isn't worth the trouble of trying to do, but the "easy fix" comment has me wondering...?Any help is much appreciated....I'm been trying to recover from a recent unexplained drop in rank. Ugh! (So feel free to analyze my site LOL!) :DA huge thanks for any advise!
Keyword Research | | eqgirl0 -
Advice - Keywords, good semantic practice...
Hi everyone, I'm still new to SEO so bear with me. I'm fairly ok with what determines good 'On page optimization' grading. Have a few good results but mostly for my ecommerce website. Now I'm building up blog content I'm often puzzled how SEO experts balance good editorial web page titles with how people actually search. An example: Buy Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses I have created the page title 'Buy Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses - Company' Created a and tag with the same keywords... drop the term a few times on the page, add to a few alt tags, add the term to the url.... but this looks contrived & isn't exactly an exciting web page title which would entice people to click through. Or is it? A more interesting web page title might be something like 'Versace & Biggie Smalls - his influence on a new generation of Hip Hop culture'. Ok this is a completely different long-tail keyword phrase. But do I need to do both? How would a seasoned SEO expert blend the dull search term into some interesting page title and hence all other on page optimization aspects. Hope you get what I'm trying to explain. Thanks for looking... Kevin
Keyword Research | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Weekly Keyword Ranking Report Question
Howdy folks! Okay so apologies for the n00b question, and additional apologies for going over ground that's potentially already been ploughed. I'm compiling a tally of the Weekly Keyword Ranking Report for a client. For the past three reports, the particular keyword I'm logging has remained in the same position. However the Change column shows it as having decreased in rank, by the same amount every week. If there has been no change in the ranking, I would have thought it would display as "Unchanged". As it stands, it shows up in the Declined category, and that seems odd to me. Anyone have an idea as to why this would be happening? Thanks for any input you can provide! Kevin
Keyword Research | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
How do I balance conflicting keyword research tools?
We've been using Wordtracker for years to find viable long tail keyword options. Lately, we've begun to doubt the true usefulness of this tool. We have implemented good optimization efforts using relevant keywords that Wordtracker suggests as reasonably well-searched with relatively low competition. Even when we rank well for these words, we get no traffic for them. Subsequent checking of these words in Google AdWords reveal that Google has found no searches for these words at all. Suspicious, we've begun cross-checking our keywords in AdWords and the Moz Keyword Difficulty tool. But now I keep getting contradictory reports. For example, a keyword I recently checked reported thus: In Wordtracker: high competition and low search In AdWords: high competition and decent search In Moz: only moderately competitive Who do I believe? How do other people weight the opinions of the various keyword research tools?
Keyword Research | | MackenzieFogelson0