Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Adding qualifiers to keywords?
-
I know that it's worth adding qualifiers to high value keywords to create long-tail variations which will later have the potential to rank well for the main keyword as well...
My questions is, how important is it that the newly-formed keyword/phrase also be evaluated for search volume?
E.g. "tips for job interviews" has a high search volume, but scores 72 in the Keyword Difficulty tool - quite high. I would therefore be tempted to create a "10 tips for job interviews" articles or something similar, yet THIS particular phrase is searched for <10 times per month...
If there are not any easy-to-find qualifiers that also create a well-searched for keyword/phrase, is it still worth adding them?
-
OK, to answer the primary question of "My questions is, how important is it that the newly-formed keyword/phrase also be evaluated for search volume?"
It's important to check on that keyword phrase, but in the case you presented, it's not going to be a huge factor in your decision process. Had the modifier shown 1000 searches per month, than it would naturally be more worthwhile.
It's very difficult to estimate long-trail traffic based on keyword data from Google's Keyword Tool. There are plenty of keywords that are listed as zero or negligible traffic, that send me plenty of visits.
You'll have to make the call for yourself as to where to draw the line in terms of what keywords to focus on for page-level, and what keywords to focus on solely within the content level.
In other words, some keywords will be valuable enough to dedicate a page to, meaning targeting that phrase in your title, h1, and in your content and images. Other keywords are just long-tail phrases that should be within the content but not have an entire dedicated page.
In the particular case that you presented, I believe that creating an article titled "10 tips for job interviews" would be an excellent way to rank for "tips for job interviews". Google is advanced enough to know that a piece of content titled "10 tips for job interviews" is equally valuable to a piece of content titled "tips for job interviews."
In my opinion, what you should really worry about is how you're going to get enough links to that piece of content for it to ever rank, not whether or not the person is searching with small modifiers like 10 tips, etc. I'd probably try and get 10 experts to each weigh in with one tip - this will be a much more valuable piece of content than something you write yourself. Otherwise it will just blend in with the crowd.
-
Thanks for this, although it didn't fully answer my question, which was essentially: Is it worth doing? If no one is searching for these full key phrases, then why bother altering the main keyword?
-
Thanks for this, although it didn't fully answer my question, which was essentially: Is it worth doing? If no one is searching for these full key phrases, then why bother altering the main keyword?
-
You can also think of using different professions as qualifiers such tips of IT interviews, SEO interviews, graduate interviews. It is also worth think about market trends. In the UK degree courses tend to end in May or June with an up swing in graduates looking for work at this time. You could make sure well in advance that you have content to match this niche that is ranking well. Work on at least a three month time lag. Also look at the job board career sections and see what they are doing and if there is anything you can do better.
Also use social media and social bookmarking once you have the content up to spread the word.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.
-
Title like "10 Tips For Job Interviews" are excellent for getting people interested and clicking on your SERP.
But, nobody really searches for them. They just expect "top 10 tips for job interviews" to be one of the results for "tips for job interviews."
If you're going to head this route, try "top tips for job interviews" without a specific number.
Also try non-numerical qualifiers like "good tips for job interviews", etc. The keyword tool is your friend here for brainstorming purposes.
Qualifiers that don't register much Google Adwords Keyword Tool are also good to use in content instead of creating their own page.
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
-
My articles aren't ranking for keywords
Hello! I hope someone can help me...I've researched my keywords (long and short tail) for my articles but they are showing up as no ranking keywords. It looks like I've only got a few of my 15 articles which actually have keywords within - and I'm not sure why! Please can someone advise? https://www.el-well.com/helping-your-parents-declutter-their-home/ Thank you.
Keyword Research | | JessicaSilver1 -
Keyword Themes - What's in a theme?
I recently read the Moz guide for "How To Rank - 25 Step SEO Master Blue Print" and had a question on keyword themes. What is considered a theme? Is there a recommended number of keywords in a theme? For example, if my site is for listing and selling cars, would the following terms fit within the same "car" theme or should the terms be broken out by "cars general" / "car locations" / "car types"? Cars Cars for sale in new york Ford Explorer for sale
Keyword Research | | Emily_A0 -
Setting Up a Keyword Matrix
Greetings MOZ community!! My real estate web site contains about 500 pages with perhaps 70 pages targeting low volume, somewhat valuable but not very competitive keywords. Three to four URLs target very competitive terms. The following terms are among the most valuable: New York City office space,
Keyword Research | | Kingalan1
New York office space,
Manhattan office space,
NYC office space Such variants as: Office space in New York City,
Office space in New York,
Office space in Manhattan,
Office space in NYC
ETCETERA convert really well How would I match different terms to different URLs? For example I have just re-written the following two critical URLs: www.nyc-officespace-leader.com (home page)
http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/office-space (product page) Would it make sense to use "Manhattan office space" and variants on the home page while excluding "New York City office space" variants? At the same time I would use "New York City office space" variants on the "office-space" product page while excluding all mention of "Manhattan office space". Is this logical and does it conform to SEO best practices? For the "NYC office space" terms I would add them to http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings. This URL has almost no text but a strong potential to rent because of a high number of incoming internal links. Is this approach sensible? In general what measures should I take to prevent URLs from competing for the same keywords? Also, is there a software package or tools that I can use to come up with keyword variants? As a non SEO professional, can I create my own keyword matrix or is this really in the realm of a professional SEO consultant? Thanks, Alan0 -
Price Comparison Website And Keywords
I run a price comparison website for a small niche at http://cdkeyprices.com I am targeting keywords for the specific products I am comparing the price/merchants on. On a typical page I would have a price column, product name, the merchant and a buy button. Buy button is affiliate linked to the merchant. The product name in the product column is the name from the actual website I am tracking. As such, my keyword was appearing sometimes up the 30 times. I've took it down some months ago but was wondering if this was a bad move. I was concerned Google would think I was stuffing the keyword. I've only just gotten into SEO the past few months so was not able to see any changes. Should i put the product column back up or would it be considered over optimization?
Keyword Research | | MrPenguin0 -
Where to start with keyword research for a telecom company?
Hey, I'm a brand's person with no SEO experience, yet I'm in a position where I have to carry out an SEO audit of our telecom company's website. Though our website is up and running for some years now, nobody bothered to undertake keyword research. From the little I've read over months on SEOmoz, I've just done the following: took out keywords bringing organic traffic on to our website and checked our rankings for those keywords on major search engines. My observation is that most of these words are long-tail keywords. Since we only have product/service information related to our offerings, most of the head terms we've used for packages/offers/services pages are branded keywords. My understanding is that we need to rank top for our branded keywords (a must) and try to rank as high as possible for long tail. In addition, we can use those keywords in our copy so that the right page ranks top for the respective keyword. Am I missing anything here? What else do I need to do?
Keyword Research | | HasanPK0 -
Bulk keyword competition tool?
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool is great, but the 5 keyword limit is too small. I need a tool that will allow checking the organic competition level of 100's of keywords (to help in selecting blog topics). Anyone know of such a tool?
Keyword Research | | AdamThompson1 -
Is "in" a keyword differentiator?
Does google view phrases with "in" in then as different keywords than the same phrase without an "in"? For example: is "great restaurants in chicago" the same keyword as "great restaurants chicago"? Whenever I do research on two phrases like this, they always come up with the same search volume.
Keyword Research | | TheSquareFoot0 -
Keywords for multi service business?
New to this so bear with, I am a TV aerial, satellite, CCTV, Door entry, Access Control, Telephone repair engineer. I have one seperate page for each of the installations I carry out as well as the basic home, about, areas, faqs and so on. My question is do i have one key phrase for each of the services i cover or do i just relate all the keywords from that service into the keywords tag ie, META name=keywords content="Digial aerials Stockport,digital aerials Manchester,aerials Stockport,aerials Manchester,aerial repairs Stockport,aerial repairs Manchester,digital,aerial,tv,tv aerials Manchester,tv aerials Stockport,arials,arial,aerial installer,aerial installations,aeril installation,Stockport,Manchester ,"> That is what i have fro Tv aerial installation, Should i make landing pages for each phrase for each service or stick to one page? www.redvalecommunications.co.uk is the site if you want to take a look thanks in advance
Keyword Research | | redvalecomms0