Keyword Selection - Long Tail or not long tail keyword
-
Hi Friends,
We have a keyword "plus size clothing" but we used this as "plus size clothing 2012" to Cover the both keywords "Plus size clothing" and "Plus size clothing 2012"
My question is, are we still focusing on "plus size clothing" when use "plus size clothing 2012" instead of the main keyword.?
What strategy do yo suggest that when to use long tail and when to not.
(when I talk to use a long tail than it means use it prominently on the page as main keyword should be used.)
-
Don't create a page per key term please. Only create pages per intention. In your case, does the page you want to rank [plus sized clothing "xxxx"] match the intent of the searcher for that term? And is the same page as relevant for [plus sized clothing]. Are you the best answer for both terms? Is that page the best answer for both terms?
I don't want to sound negative but I highly doubt that. If you sell plus sized clothing on the national level, your homepage is probably the best page. If you are going for new styles in 2012, that should be a different page with just those styles. If you are a store or collection of stores in Boston, then [Boston plus sized clothing] is more your term.
Now after all of that, do know that typically using a broader term in addition to some modifiers is perfectly fine if it makes sense for the page. Don't take that too far, don't key word stuff your title tags or content. Know your keywords, use them, but don't abuse them. Talk to people, don't market to them.
-
+1 what safor web design said. When using a long tail keyword, you covering a multitude of short keyword phrases that you could eventually end up ranking well for.
Long tail keyword phrase Ex: Plus size clothing New York City
Shorter keyword phrase ex: Plus size clothing, plus size clothing New York, Clothing New York, City Clothing, Plus size city clothing, plus clothing, size clothing, clothing
Obviously, some of the short keyword phrases may not have much ranking power like size clothing, but nevertheless, look at all the possibilities you can have for ranking off just one long tail keyword phrase?
I think its win win situation.
-
Short keyphrases are more difficult to rank because a lot of bussiness are ranking with them: Ej: "Rent Car" is more difficult to rank than "Rent Car NY" because at the 2º option, you compete "only" at NY City, but at 1º option, you compete with every city, town...
So, if you choose long tail terms, you can get firsts ranking positions easily, increase the traffic to your site, and maybe in few months, if you increase your PR/AR... you can compete for short keyphrases with big sites for shorters keyphrases.
P.D: Sorry about my english is a little rusty
-
@Safor web Design You are right that long tail keywords are often rank better than the short one and good option to start ranking.
But in which situation we should go for main keyword (short one) instead of long tail, because long tail keywords are easy to optimize but not as fruitful as short one.
What you say?
@Alan yes 2012 is not seem good with this keywords but used with many other keywords, I used 2012 here for example.
(I repeat my question In Economics language
)
Is there any Opportunity cost between the Long tail and Short keywords?
-
The short answer is yes, you are optimizing for both, but as Safor suggests, 2012 is not the best keyword, i would do as safor suggests and use city name instead
-
Hi alexgray
Long tail keywords are very useful. Usually, they often rank better than short keywords, and are a good option to start ranking.
2021 doesn´t seem an useful keyword, because Google rank firstly recently creation. So it isn't necessary that keyword. I'll use a city name better.
To avoid duplicate content, you must create new content for each new keyphrase, or indicate with canonical wich one is the most important landing.
I hope it can help you.
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
-
Keyword cannibalization
Hi, I have two questions regarding keyword cannibalization. 1. I am doing the SEO for a website that sells do-it-yourself packages for heating, bathrooms, ventilation and so on for new houses or for renovations. The most important pages are the product pages (e.g. example.com/products/bathrooms) but there is also a blog divided into categories per product (e.g. example.com/category/bathrooms). The difference is clear: the product page focuses on the product itself, and the blog category page contains all blog posts relating bathrooms (tips, new materials, new innovations,...). My question is if the product page and blog category page can compete with each other for the term bathrooms (although they have different content). Does it help or is it enough to direct internal links from separate blog posts to the most important page (being the product page) and back to avoid my category blog page to compete with my product page? Another possibility would be to use a canonical tag on the category page pointing to the product page, but this actually isn't good practice because it isn't really duplicate content. Third possibility would be to no index the category page. So what is the best solution of the three? 2. A second example of keyword cannibalization can be category archive pages for webshops. If you have a category page example.com/jeans and a subcategory page example.com/jeans/women, is it useful to optimize on both pages for different terms, being jeans for the first page and jeans for women for the second, or will Google not make this distinction because the keyword are too closely related? In other words, is it useful to write content specifically for jeans for women and make a landing page for this keyword, or will this page compete with the category page that has been optimized for just the keyword jeans? In large clothing webshops, you can see for example that there is an optimized page for Nike (content, headings,...) but not for Nike for women or Nike for men. Is this just laziness or is this done exactly to avoid keyword cannibalization? Looking forward to your comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Google has penalized me for a keyword,and removed from google some one know for how long time is the penalty
i have by some links from fiverr i was ranking 9 for this keyword with 1200 of searches after fiverr it has disappeared from google more then 10 days i guess this is a penalty someone know how long a penalty like this is how many days to months ? i don't get any messages in webmaster tools this is the gig https://www.fiverr.com/carissa30/do-20-unique-domains-high-tf-and-cf-flow-backlinks-high-da?source=Order+page+gig+link&funnel=a7b5fa4f-8c0a-4c3e-98a3-74112b658c7f
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexmuller870 -
Keyword Frequent On and Drop Off
Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am currently doing SEO for a client’s site, over the past few weeks the keywords have gradually gone up steadily. One of the keywords however continues to jump on and off rankings. For a few days it will jump up to 23<sup>rd</sup> in Google Rankings, but then it will completely drop of the radar, not even in the top 200 anymore. I’ve gone through the site to check if there is anything wrong and stuck to guidelines offered here on SEO Moz but I’m stumped to figure it out. The Keyword has a page that helps target it, there is no stuffing, all I can think is if there are bad back-links coming in to us that Google that continues to push down the rankings. Can anyone help shed some light on the situation for me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
Keyword Position in Headings
Hi All, Where is the best place to position the keyword / keyphrase within a heading? i.e. for keyphrase Red Shoes Which of the below would yield better SEO results whilst ensuring readability to us humans. Latest fashions in red shoes.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
or Red shoes at an affordable price. Thanks Mark0 -
Meta NOINDEX... how long before Google drops dupe pages?
Hi, I have a lot of near dupe content caused by URL params - so I have applied: How long will it take for this to take effect? It's been over a week now, I have done some removal with GWT removal tool, but still no major indexed pages dropped. Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Cannot Identify Self Cannabilizing Keyword Anchor
I am struggling to locate on our website www.towelsrus.co.uk a self cannibalizing keyword. Can anyone help? http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/Bath-Linen-Bath-Pillows/Aztex/Luxury-Bath-Pillows-With-Suction-Cups-4-Embroidered-Designs_ct463bd182pd2818.htm void Keyword Self-Cannibalization Easy fix <dl> <dt>Cannibalizing link</dt> <dd>"Luxury Bath Pillows With Suction Cups, 4 Embroidered Designs"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>It's a best practice in SEO to target each keyword with a single page on your site (sometimes two if you've already achieved high rankings and are seeking a second, indented listing). To prevent engines from potentially seeing a signal that this page is not the intended ranking target and creating additional competition for your page, we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text. Note that using modified versions is sometimes fine (for example, if this page targeted the word 'elephants', using 'baby elephants' in anchor text would be just fine).</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Unless there is intent to rank multiple pages for the target keyword, it may be wise to modify the anchor text of this link so it is not an exact match.</dd> </dl>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Image maps and keyword density?!
If image maps/shapes are showing as keyword density in SEO tools, could they skewing the SEO effectiveness of a page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Crumpled_Dog0 -
What is the downside with having too long of a title tag?
With Google placing so much relevance on title tags, it seems to help if you mention local cities within your title tag. I'm wondering if the positive of having more keywords in a title tag outweighs the negative of having too long of one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TLSNET0