Keyword distribution in the whole site
-
I've been taught during a SEO course that the whole site has to contain the chosen keywords with a fixed proportion of optimized pages, that should be like this:
50% of pages optimized on the most relevant keyword (just one keyword)
25% of pages optimized on secondary kewords (depending on the size of the site, could be a few pages for each secondary keywords)
25% of pages on long tail keywords.
the teachers was a very respected SEO professional, but I've never seen this strategy anywhere in other articles or SEO guides.
what do you think about it?
It's true that it brings visibility for the top keyword?
does it lead to cannibalization?
what others strategy do you use? -
My definition of relevant in this case is: the keyword is often used in sentences with the term.
If my keyword was cold cereal, the words milk, bowl, and spoon would be relevant. I could then build pages for the long tail search terms:
Cold cereal bowl
how much milk should I put in a cold cereal
What is the best spoon to use with cold cereal
On each of those pages, I would link to my main page which is optimized for the keyword cold cereal using the anchor text "cold cereal", but only if it made sense to me as a user to see that phrase linked. Sometimes you have to be creative in your content copy, but most of the time it can be done and make sense to the end user.
Google is very good at recognizing these relevant keyword patterns.
-
It does make sense. But what is your exact definition of "relevant"? How is the keyword used in the content?
-
It is important you keep in mind the terms relevancy verses optimized. A page can be relevant to a topic (main keyword) without being optimized for that keyword. When this is the case, you can focus on a long-tail keyword for a sub-page and have relevancy for the main keyword. You would then want to link to the main page with the main keyword from the sub-page.
In this case I would say that what you learned in your class is true, keep AT LEAST 50% of the pages RELEVANT to the main keyword, but not optimized to the main keyword.
The end grading factor though is, what works for your site? A lot of SEO is trial and error based upon bsaic principles. Sometimes you just have to try what your gut tells you to do and watch and see if that works, if not try the next idea.
-
it was a one day beginners course, and we was talking about a 100 pages site targeted to national audience (italy) as an example.
but was presented as a general startegy.
Now I'm not a total newbie anymore, I have worked on some sites with goods results using this technique.
Nowadays I'm working on a 100 pages site, targeting to USA whole market. I've find relevant keywords for the market and I'm making decision about pairing pages and keywords.
My question is: is the strategy illustrated good for a site like that? how many pages I have to optimize for each relevant keyword? I have about 30 keywords, and 8 among them are the most importants
-
Hi David,
Build your site for your audience, create good content they will want to read, learn from or simply be entertained by. For on page SEO use the seomoz on page optimization tool and target one keyword per page. You can also use scheema.org to add some meta descriptions, this will helo the search engine determine what you page is about.
For external link building:
50% Anchor branded name / URL
25% Diverse anchor text
25% Exact Match
Hope this helps.
-
The first thing I would take in to consideration is, how much did you pay for the class? Was it a quick one day thing, a couple hours long or a week? How in depth was the instructor able to go? For a complete newbie just getting in to SEO with a small website (4-5 pages) these would be some good tips because it would give them experience optimizing pages and watching a keyword start to climb. With a site that small, it's most likely something that is trying to climb in a local search. In a small populated area doing local SEO, this would work very well to rank in most areas.
There is a possibility this could lead to cannibalization, but it all depends on how you structure the 50% of pages that are "optimized" for the keyword. Ask yourself, "Is there one page that is clearly about my keyword that others reference?"
Other strategy to ask yourself is, "Does it make sense to the user or just the search engine?" Search engines themselves don't buy anything.
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
-
What is the best way to deal with creating a separate brand with it's own website when the main site already ranks well for the target keywords?
A client currently has a site that ranks well for a number of queries. They recently created a new site for a spin-off brand/company that they now want to focus on ranking for some of the keywords their original site already ranked for. What would be the best way to go about this without throwing away the existing authority and traffic the original site has for those queries?
On-Page Optimization | | P1WS_Sully0 -
Company name in Site Meta description?
Ok. So I know that you should have your company name in the site title, but is it all that important in the site description? The reason I ask is because I am competing with another company for the #1 position (I was number 1, now #2) that has an 8 character name and mine is 22 taking away from a great deal of real estate in my 150-160 character site description in which I could provide additional information describing my company. Should I remove my name in the site description enabling me to use more descriptive keywords and actionable text such as (Find, research, contact, professional, info) etc. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Incorporating a difficult keyword in Headline
Hi ! I need to incorporate a password in a H1 Headline that is "Photography Freiburg" As "The best Photography Freiburg" would sound strange and would be grammatically incorrect I would write "The best Photography in Freiburg". Is this much worse concerning SEO? Or will Google still put a high correlation to the Searchterm "Photography Freiburg" ? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | RWW0 -
Dashes "-" in keyword?
Just running over the page/keyword analyzer and Moz picked up the fact that my link and title are not the same as the keyword I am targeting. I am targeting the keyword "Battlefield 4 CD Key" However my title (and therefore link) are Battlefield 4 CD-Key. Note the dash. Does the dashes matter in SEO or should I try to remove them and have continuity through all of the page.
On-Page Optimization | | MrPenguin0 -
How much content does Google Crawl on your site?
Hi, We've had a debate around the office where some people believe that Google only crawls the first 150-200 words on a page and some people believe that they priority content that is above the fold and other people believe that all content has the same priority. Can you help us? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | mdorville
Matt0 -
Adding keywords to URL's
I understand the importance of having the keyword in the URL (at least now I do). When I created my site (www.enchantingquotes.com), I was completely ignorant about SEO. So....question is...how do I go about adding keywords to already done pages? Do I create a new section and then redirect - or do I have to basically recreate pages? Thx much 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | enchantedgirlz0 -
Duplicate content on area specific sites
I have created some websites for my company Dor-2-Dor and there is a main website where all of the information across the board is on (www.dor2dor.com) but I also have area specific sites which are for our franchisees who run certain areas around the country (www.swansea.dor2dor.com or www.oxford.dor2dor.com) The problem is that the content that is on a lot of the pages is the same on all of them for instance our faq's page, special offers etc. What is the best way to get these pages to rank well and not have the duplicate content issues and be ranked down by search engines? Any help will be greatly received.
On-Page Optimization | | D2DWeb0 -
Keyword issue
On this site filmeonlinenoi.com the keyphrase "filme online gratis" its auto-cannibalizating?
On-Page Optimization | | Alexsmenaru0