Is it considered spammy to have multiple pages on the same site optimized for the same keyword?
-
Is it OK to keyword-optimize multiple pages for the same keyword? Is it beneficial, hurtful, or not a major factor either way?
-
Alice - thank you very much for this thoughtful & detailed input! I will put it to use.
-
Alice - thank you very much for this thoughtful & detailed input! I will put it to use.
-
In short, it's not best practices to optimize multiple pages for the same keyword. It's called "keyword cannibalisation" and it's a very old issue in SEO.
Rand wrote this post in 2007, and it's still relevant today!
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalizationSince this time, the Panda update began to penalize site that contained many similar pages targeting the same or similar keywords. Examples include pages like:
- Best Plumber Atlanta
- Best Plumber Atlanta Suburb
- Best Plumber Downtown Atlanta
- Best plumber Atlanta Georgia
In general, if you take these pages and make sure they target different topics, you're likely to see your rankings and traffic rise.
-
Optimising multiple pages for the same keyword can be detrimental. This can lead to "keyword cannibalisation", where pages are forced to compete with each other for the same query. This can result in lower overall rankings.
Ideally each page should be optimised for a different keyword - e.g. your homepage could be optimised for "leather shoes" and your category pages could be optimised for "men's leather shoes", "women's leather shoes", "kid's leather shoes" etc,
Having one page for each topic/keyword and making it as useful and comprehensive as possible will attract more links than having three or four different pages about the same topic.
If you're worried about keyword cannibalisation you can use internal anchor text to indicate which page should be considered the authority for that keyword - e.g. your "men's leather shoes" page could have the anchor "leather shoes" that directs back to the home page.
-
In my opinion and understanding it is actually not a bad idea to have multiple pages optimized for the same keyword. It is often used for Reputation Management, first page dominance and other reasons. YOur Primamry goal should first be to get your main page ranked as high as possible. Then once you maximize your efforts there then you can consider multiple pages on page 1.
My experience as a Realtor who just recently started learning more about seo has shown me that major sites use this tactic to push down their competitors and dominate page 1 which I'm assuming is your goal. Ex: Zillow, Trulia, Homes and Realtor all use this tactic to drive down the local Sites like mines. Fortunately I've learned enough to counter their efforts and am on page one for almost all my main keywords.
There are some basic SEO rules to follow though.
- Use White Hat Techniques
- Don't buy links for this or any purpose
- Make Sure each page has unique content and not duplicate content.
You might also want to use Vertical Search for this tactic. Meaning YouTube Videos which can rank high, Images, News Articles that you can post as a free lancer for a local paper.
I hope this helps and 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
-
Two major pages ranking for the same keyword phrase
Hola all, So I'm having an issue where I have two important pages (homepage and page that lists products) that seemingly take turns ranking for an important keyword phrase. One day the homepage is in the top 20, one day the other, one day neither. And it's gone on like this for a couple of months. Both are optimized for keyword phrases that contain a shorter keyword phrase. So for example, let's say the homepage is optimized for: "Get paid to take polls" and the other page is optimized for "Earn cash for paid polls and more." Both contain: "paid polls." Is there cannibalization happening here? Should I completely remove "paid polls" from one keyword phrase? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Roman
Keyword Research | | Dynata_panel_marketing0 -
How to determine if you have same site pages competing for rankings?
One of my client's sells career assessment tests / personality tests. The site includes a shop with detailed product pages for the tests and also has lengthy informational pages describing the science behind the different tests, etc as they are pretty indepth and hard to understand for someone who is new to them. The site also includes a blog that has 500 or more posts, all career related... some of them referencing products. My concern is: We'd like the product or information pages to rank for SERPs. Some of the blog posts are ranking instead for their top target keywords. My question is: Is there an easy way to determine which pages on a site are competing for the same keyword? And what is the best way to correct this issue and ensure the correct page gets targeted? I was thinking adding a noindex to the pages would be the best way. Advice is greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | dogstarweb0 -
Keyword Analysis
Is there any way I can find out a list of the top keywords for my site automatically without having to type in certain words myself and wait on the results?
Keyword Research | | meteorelectrical0 -
What is the best keyword tool for 2013?
Since the change in Google's keyword tool I have found it frustrating to use in finding new keywords. Which keyword tool would you recommend? Many thanks.
Keyword Research | | WSIDW0 -
Keyword with or without stress?
hi to everyone, I'm new here I'm doing some research for keywords related to sofa in brazil. Portuguese use lot of stress in writing words. there are many important keywords that should be written with the stress. For example: sofás but I'm measuring many more researches for the same word without stress (see attachment). This is the same for many other key phrases with 2 or 3 words. in 90% of the case, key phrases without stress has many more researches Now I have 3 questions: results are very similar for these two keys. are really two different keys or are they the same for google? what number to keep for total search? the higher? the sum between the two? what keywords I have to use in the pages? "sofás" is the correct one, but "sofas" has many more research? U1sYe.png
Keyword Research | | eriksatie0 -
Keyword competitiveness/research
I'm familiar with ranking factors and can get a pretty good idea of whether going for a keyword is realistic by looking at the seomoz keyword difficulty tool. As well as the % score it has a lot of useful information. There was an seomoz article a while ago that detailed how 100 or so experts determine a keyword's competitiveness. Does anybody have the link? Or just as good, any useful guides to interpreting the data to gauge how possible it is to compete? Thanks
Keyword Research | | PTMPercy0 -
No idea where to start with keywords
I have a friend who owns an IT business in Pennsylvania. I have been on the adwords tool begging for keywords that people are searching for and I am getting no search results at all. I have tried all types of combinations- IT consultant Pennsylvania IT consultant PA network solutions pennsylvania computer tech pennsylvania ...and many variations thereof. Does this mean that maybe just no one looks for this type of business on google? What would you guys do in this situation? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | GroundFloorSEO0 -
Should we change our site domain name to include our keyword?
Our niche has one keyword phrase that is much, much more active than any other comparable phrase. Let's call that phrase "math problems". Within this phrase, the "math" is absolutely the most important keyword, as it is also used in every spin-off search phrase, like "math answers", "math practice", etc. We've had our domain since 1996, and is currently the company name - "Rocketproblems.com". Over the last year (2010-2011) our SERPs have steadily dropped to the point where we're not getting a sustainable level of business from organic search, whereas in 2009 we were doing fantastic. However, we've also had "Rocketmathproblems.com" since about 2000, just gathering dust. What I've noticed from the top search results is that nearly every domain has either "math" or "math problems" in its URL. Do you think it's worth it to switch to the keyword-rich URL? It is a bit more verbose, and the "Rocketmathproblems.com" v.s. "Rocketproblems.com" example perfectly captures the different feeling. My inclination is that SEO is only becoming more competitive, and if we aren't getting worthwhile business from organic search at the moment then we should bite the bullet and make the switch for the future, along with ramping up our content generation. However, I also noticed that in late 2009 a previous webmaster switched to "Rogermath.com" but switched back within a month when our SERP for the key phrase was a page lower - I gleaned this from a Moz Juicy Keywords Report :). Thoughts?
Keyword Research | | ACann0