Longer Tail Keyword for URL and Anchor text
-
Hello
If I am trying to rank for the term blue widgets as a primary, and also the term shiny blue widgets , and big shiny blue widgets as secondary - would the url /blue-widgets or /shiny-blue-widgets or /big-shiny-blue-widgets be better (all else equal)
- Would the word shiny / big dilute or affect of KW in the domain for the rankings for blue widgets (all esle equal)
- Regarding anchor text of inbound links, if the anchor text is shiny blue widgets, is that going to help me rank for both queries "blue widgets" and "shiny blue widgets" equally? (all else equal), or would including shiny, affect my ranking for "bliue widgets"
- Or is it better to keep the anchor text as just blue widgets (of course we could vary it) but Im trying to get a feel for how that would work as we are builfing some links I can control the anchor text.
I hope this was clear enough
Thanks
Sam
-
In my opinion...
1. I would use the most descriptive URL for the product at hand. That being said, if you want to rank for all three keyword variations, I would go with /big-shiny-blue-widgets.
2. No, inbound anchor text of "shiny blue widgets" will not help the page rank equally for "blue widgets" and "shiny blue widgets". It will help both, but lean toward the latter. That being said, you want to vary the anchor text so this is almost a non-issue (see #3).
3. Vary the anchor text and include all three variations (and possibly others).
Here are some other things to consider...
1. The title of the page is a very important indicator for the search engines. If you want to rank for all three variations, you should use "big shiny blue widgets" in your title tag.
2. The content on the page (text) should include all three variations of the text you want to rank for - without stuffing it in. This is a tough one to call out a rule for. If you read the text and it sounds too keyword heavy, it probably is.
3. Another place to inject the keywords you want to rank for is in relation to images of said products. You could include specific product descriptions as captions and in the image alt tag.
4. The page description is another place to possible put all three variations. However, this could be considered overkill. Also, don't forget people will be looking at this text in the SERPs. You want the description to be compelling to a human as well as a searchbot or else your clickthrough rate may suffer.
5. The competitive landscape of the product at hand is important to consider. If you are trying to rank for multiple variations of an obscure keyword set, you may find it easy to rank well for all three keyword variations without a lot of link building. If, on the other hand, you are attempting to rank for highly competitive keywords, you may find yourself needing to pick one to focus on or build lots of links.
Hope this helps! If anyone else feels differently, I would love to hear what you have to say.
-
In my opinion it would be best to have some variation in the anchor texts but if the URL is exact. I'm assuming that in this case 'blue widgets' is a highly competative keyword, so you might want to consider the 'long tail' keywords and optimise your URL for those longtail keywords, in this case /shiny-blue-widgets. You will probably get ranked easier this way. But it all depends on the current competition.
Good luck!
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
-
A number of times you should use your keyword in a guest blog
Is it true that if you want to rank for a chosen keyword, you have to mention that keyword 3%-5% of the whole content (in a guest blog)?
Link Building | | FilkaCer2 -
Tools which automatically check anchor text
Tools which alert of low anchor text diversity Hey guys does anyone know of any tools which can alert you of low anchor text diversity across sites? Any backlink tools/data sources have alerts like this? Cheers.
Link Building | | jayoliverwright0 -
Sudden big drop for keyword ranking this month -Numerous possible factors... which is most likely?
Hi I have a fairly new site (domain around 1 year and 6 months old) and in December it was sitting on Google's second page for our main keyword "cv writing service" In late December we had a couple of stories picked up by the press and got some really good contextual links from a handful of well known media sites with DA60 and above. Naturally I thought this would have a positive effect on our position for our keyword so I checked and was shocked to see that the site is now sitting on page 4... A drop of 2 pages Also my site has dropped one point in DA on the Moz open site explorer I have some possible theroies for the drop but would really appreicate if anyone could point me in the right direction for the possible cause of this drop and what I need to focus on to fix tihs issue. Theories.... I made some big changes to the copy of my homepage and aboutapge a few weeks before the stories were picked up - although the copy is still similar content and optimised for my keywords I had some early SEO work done by a freelancer in the early days and I now realise that a lot of the links are very weak and on quite poor looking sites (although they are not flagged as spammy in OSE, I think they are spammy) The story that got picked up by the media was slightly off topic - it was about jobs rather than CV's - could this make google think that my site is not relevant? Prior to these stories being picked up - we took a short break from link building for a few months due to resource issues So if anyone knows if any of these factors are likely to have caused the drop I would be grateful to know! Thanks Andrew
Link Building | | Fennzil0 -
Which of the following actions caused a drop in keyword ranking?
Hello, About 2 months ago we build a specific page arround the keyword 'kerstkaarten' (christmas cards in Dutch). It moved up to the first page (7th position), but last week we fell back to a +50 position.
Link Building | | ETonnard
The changes we made during the last week where minimal, and I really don't have an idea what may have caused the sudden drop in ranking. Maybe you can help? Link: http://www.smartphoto.be/nl/belangrijke-momenten/kerst/kerstkaarten Changes made: -> I changed the keyword kerstkaarten on tim on the page to 'kerstkaartjes', because the Moz page grader said the keyword density was a bit too high. -> We changed the top image on the page with a different promo. Title of the image changed from 'kerstkaarten-promo' to 'kerstkaarten-wenskaarten' -> The date on a small legal text on the page changed -> We got 2 backlinks from bloggers who've written an article about our christmas cards. So no major changes in my opinion. Any ideas? Thanks a lot! hz2DpJS0 -
Does a text URL (without hyperlink) provide any SEO value?
Our clients use the link shortener of our service software to share their job offers. Sometime the job baords they post to do not allow hyperlink and thus post the url as text only. Do these url texts offer any benfits in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | rflores0 -
One keyword has dropped, everything else is ok, why?
Ok so this is what I got, 1 page ranks for about 5 different terms, all closely matching for example: Flower Pots, Flower Pot, Cheap Flower Pots, Buy Flower Pots. Flower Pot and Flower Pots are on page 2. Flower Pot stays where it is BUT Flower Pots drops out the rankings completely after being there for years. Could a blast of exact match anchor text at the term Flower Pots cause this? I would have thought the page would have been zapped rather then just one keyword. Any ideas?
Link Building | | Bondara0 -
Can personal name anchors from blog commenting be a risk?
Hello, I've created a new site early this year. In an effort to stay on Googles good side I decided not to do any link building. Everything you create yourself is pretty much frowned upon by Google, right? I have been doing a fair bit of blog commenting where that would add value. As a result my link profile shows about 50% anchors with my name in it. Can this be dangerous? Thanks!
Link Building | | andersvin0 -
Changing backlinks anchor text
Hi, I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links? Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this? Thanks Duke
Link Building | | clickangel0