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
-
Exact keyword match on a page is dead. Is this right??
Hi, I read that you should give up on using exact keywords on a page if it means that the written content flows better. I just want your thoughts on this please because I don't want to miss opportunities. The keywords used are an example: SEO LONDON is the high vol./popular keyword that I want a page to rank for. Would I use that as the main keyword throughout the page, even though it doesn't really make sense (by this I mean you'd never really use this term other than typing it into google)? Or should I use something that makes more sense such as, 'SEO IN LONDON' or LONDON SEO? Would Google overlook the 'IN' in 'seo in london' so it's seen as 'SEO London'? (Same sort of question for LONDON SEO). If this is the case then why does google still show 1000 hits for SEO LONDON and just 100 for SEO IN LONDON? This makes me think that I should just target the exact keyword that people are typing even if it doesn't look natural. Best, James
Keyword Research | | CamperConnect140 -
Keyword Over-usage?
I have a photography page, where there are a number of galleries. In the galleries and thumbnails of each photo I'm selling. These also include the title. It's built dynamically. However, I've noticed when I do an on-page grade check, that one of the places I'm failing is over-using the keyword on the page. This is mainly due to the titles of each photo containing that keyword. For example, there might be a photo gallery for images of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and 30 of the 40 images on the page have a title with "Golden Gate Bridge" in them. So naturally, the title is displaying this on the page and showing up 30+ times (after the term is used in the page text as well). Is this a really big problem, or is the benefit on each individual photo page outweighing any hit on the gallery page? Any thoughts? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | shannmg10 -
Keyword every blog post?
Hi Should I be looking to keyword every blog post I write? Obviously the point in a blog for most of us is to draw in traffic so should I keyword research every blog post and use that as keyword? What if there is no keyword stats for the blog im writing? I guess I just use a keyword I make up anyway and hope people type it? Thanks Chris
Keyword Research | | mrcsleonard0 -
Acne related keywords in Google.fr
Hello everyone, I am setting up a website with domainname.fr to rank in google.fr with Acne related keywords. Can anyone give me Competitive keywords which can bring more than 10K visitors per month?? Help will be very much appreciated. P.S: Actually, my uncle is having an offline acne product shop in France. He asked me to setup a website in Google.fr so that he can make some money.
Keyword Research | | artemmin0 -
What Keyword reasearch tools are you using?
I'm finding the Google tool to be inadequate for our needs. Does anyone have any suggestions of a better tool out there.
Keyword Research | | Xcellimark0 -
Keyword Research Tool
Which tool is most reliable to do Keyword Research ? I have observed that data in Google Keywords Tool seems to fluctuate a lot. For instance a particular keyword in GKT had an exact Global Search Volume of 2800 3 days back , today it is around 1200 . I can not make decisions on such unreliable data ...
Keyword Research | | iamnew0 -
Google keyword tool
Hey anyone noticed Google's keyword tool seems to be returning weird data for search volume compared to just a few days ago? "iron fist clothing" exact match was returning around 1,000 local monthly searches and a monthly trend of approximately the same over the past year. As of yesterday it has zero searches for exact match and even the monthly trends have all been set to zero for every month going back a year Now I suppose this could happen in theory but the fact that the trend is showing up as zero for each month over the last year makes me think this could be a bug. I've also noticed this for one of my keywords on my SEO site, again suddenly gone to zero searches and monthly trends going back a year. However a quick check on webmaster tools shows the impressions going back a few months at the average of 1,300 that the old trend suggested it should be. Anyone else noticed this?
Keyword Research | | barabis770 -
Two for the price of one: Can I rank for multiple keywords when only targeting one keyword?
If I'm optimizing for a specific keyword, is it accurate to assume that by ranking for that specific keyword that I will also be able to rank for similar or root keywords merely by ranking for the original keyword? For example, if I'm targeting 'free online bucket list' is it safe to assume that I will also be able to inadvertently rank for 'online bucket list' or 'free bucket list'? Can I assure clients of this? Or if I'm targeting 'Colorado grocery store' should I also naturally rank for 'grocery store Colorado' and not need to make both of these my targeted keywords?
Keyword Research | | derrickkuhn0