Ranking for Synonymous Terms (ie. lawyer & attorney)
-
To accomplish ranking for synonymous search terms, are we better off just letting Google make the connection? Should we put the secondary synonymous term in our page titles? Is it best practice to create a completely unique landing page for the term? Not sure how to go about this. Some examples would be "miami lawyer" or "miami attorney", "obgyn" vs "gynecologist" etc. Any help on this would be much appreciated!
-
I stick with one page, and use the terms interchangeably within the text itself and use the more frequently searched word as the keyword in urls and title tags.
-
Thanks Chris, that's the way we've been doing it to this point (just going with the primary search term that has the most search volume) but I definitely agree with you that Google HAS to be moving in the direction of showing search results for synonymous terms.
-
I agree with Chris. Stick with one page. It would be worth using synonyms where appropriate in the content of your pages though.
Peter
-
When I first started here, the previous SEO company employed a double strategy. We had urls that were blah, blah, attorneys-lawyers and title tags that were attorneys-laywers, and text that was attorneys-lawyers. Except for the urls, I changed it just because I thought it looked bad. I decided to just pick one and work on it. It has worked out fine. Overall our rankings have improved, and will only continue to improve as google does, as stated by Chris above.
Without question, there is a difference if you decide to pick one of the words over the other. The one you pick and optimize for will rank higher. It does for us on everyone of those keywords, however, it is slight. Most often it is 1-5 places. Granted, that can be the difference between being on the first page and the second, so I guess "slight" is relative.
However, my life has been much easier once I decided I didn't want to write for both attorney and lawyer, and just picked one. My content is more user friendly, my rankings went up and I don't have to worry about duplicate content.
Also, if you are looking long term, (and this part is pure conjecture) I could see Google eventually penalizing a site that has one page for Miami Attorney and one page for Miami Lawyer, (because that can't be that substantively different) or at the very least, not allowing both pages to rank. Thus, you would have spent a whole lot of time for, at most, modest gains.
Hope this helps!
Ruben
-
Ricky,
While Google's working to unify rankings for synonymous terms, synonyms can often have slightly different uses and meanings--especially regionally. At the least, be sure to investigate if that's the case with your terms in your region. You're likely to get a bit more traffic if you have separate pages ranked at the top for each term but whether the value's there for you or not is a different matter. The more advanced Google gets, the more difficult it is to know what differences are required in the two pages in order to differentiate them and get them to rank for the separate terms. Personally, I think it's better to choose one or the other as part of your branding and just go with it.
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 an external firewall affect rankings?
For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic. Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes? Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | samgold0 -
Bing & JavaScript?
Hi Moz Community, Are Bing/Yahoo crawlers different from Google’s crawler in terms of how they process client side JavaScript and especially content/data loaded by client side JavaScript? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Ranking for brand name but no other terms (no manual penalty) is this penguin?
Hi guys, I would like your opinions on this site www.colourbanners.co.uk Seems to be ranking for 'colour banners' but has dropped for keywords such as 'banners' and 'pvc banners' which were ranking well. There has been no manual actions against the site so im assuming this is an algo penalty? Any ideas/suggestions what could be causing this? regards Gerry
Technical SEO | | gezzagregz0 -
Does server location affect rankings?
Hey guys, I'm just wondering whether you can help me out here. We're considering moving our servers to a new country but are a little hesitant to what - if any - SEO impact it would have on our clients' sites. For instance, if all of our clients are UK-based but their server isn't, would that affect their rank in Google UK? Or is it simply just a case of whether moving a server would affect the site speed or not?
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Shopping Carts & Sub Domains
I was hoping someone could guide me in making the correct decision regarding integrating my existing domain with a hosted shopping cart. I have an existing website to promote my bricks and mortar retail operation and am expanding into web retailing. I will be using one of the major hosted shopping carts. What is the best way to join the two components from an SEO perspective? Have the cart as a sub domain of my main site, or move my existing domain name to be hosted by the cart provider and have both components operate under the same general domain? I have read arguments that putting your cart within a sub domain is not a good idea because any clout of the pre-existing domain will not be shared with the sub domain; that they will be treated as two separate sites. I have also read that using a sub domain is a good idea being that the content focus of the main domain (marketing and blogs) is different form the focus of the sub domain (product sales), and that the two components would benefit form earning their own rankings undiluted by the other. And, I have also read that search engines are getting good at being able to deduce that an eCommerce sub domain is legitimate extension of a content intensive main domain, and that they treat the two components as a combined whole. What is the truth? Which is the better way to go? Any guidance would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MEI1520 -
Why did google pick this page to rank over another one?
I recently started working here and I have noticed that google is ranking some pages over other for the main key word. Example: We are ranking on page one for ATV tires for this url http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/43/81/165/723/ATV-Tires-All I thought google would pick http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/81/165/ATV-Tires since it is higher up in the folders. I Have a couple reasons why the are picking the other one. Mostly from link signals from one other site and footer link.. Any other thoughts. If we want google to rank the second url instead what would you suggest?
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Event Landing Pages not ranking
Hi there I need to optimize the website of a club/concert venue. The site isn't bad and has authority, but the event pages don't seem to rank and I'm unsure about the reason. There is an overview page of the events: http://www.kaufleuten.ch/events/ What happens currently when clicking on a specific event (on "WEITER", top right of each event) is that users get redirected to a hashtag page by jQuery. The href of "WEITER" itself links to another landing page (which is IMO the one we should see ranking for the specific event). Here is a concrete example: Look at the event "Tanz & Konzert: Andreas Vollenweider, Seven & ROKPA-KIDS" on /events by clicking on "WEITER", you get directed to http://www.kaufleuten.ch/events/#2790/andreas-vollenweider the actual "WEITER" link in the source code though, points to the landing page http://www.kaufleuten.ch/event/andreas-vollenweider/ This seems to be done by an AJAX load: jQuery loads a DIV with the ID "ajax-content". Apparently, this is the code responsible for it: $(„.link“, click(function() {
Technical SEO | | zeepartner
el.find('.wrapper').load(target+' #ajax-content', function() {
});
return false;
}); I know the site has good authority and should rank well. however, the event landing pages never seem to appear, but only the page /events is ranking: SERP
(Strangely, when using the site command, the event page suddenly appears above: SERP. (But I have never seen this in a "normal search query", even though we are the organisers and should at least be among the top 5). Now my question: Does Google consider this AJAX load to be some sort of cloaking? (because the href in the code is different to you actually end up by clicking "WEITER"). Will the landing pages begin to rank if we disable this AJAX load? Or should we stick to hashtags and not even create landing pages? (but then, we will have no control over title tags of specific events, right?) Thanks for your help, I'm a bit lost here as my JS knowledge is meagre... Cheers,
Phil0 -
Google Places & Multiple Accounts?
As an agency that manages multiple accounts should I have all my Google Place accounts under one account or should I create a separate account for each client with a unique username and password for every client? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | fun52dig
Gary Downey0