How do you decide which keywords to optimize first?
-
Let me be very clear, I am not looking for info on how to rank keywords so please do not post about that.
I have a list of keywords I chose and want to rank for, and every group of keywords are related. I was wondering, what is a good strategy for determining which keywords to start with? Should I take one keyword from each group so it looks more natural? Should I do a group of 10 related keywords at a time?
Any ideas? Links? Tips? Resources? What have you done in the past?
-
That's an SEO companies IP
I think if you're looking at level of competition, ppc $ and monthly traffic estimates that can be a good start but you are also part SEO part business consultant so you need to factor in the clients margins and other factors as well if you want to do your job properly in my opinion.
With existing websites there is always this sunk costs bias which I tend to see creeping in as well which affects people's decision making process.
-
Stephanie i will suggest you to make a use of Hittail Keyword tool as it helps you to get a list of keywords that are good and have potential to get you good traffic + are closer to the first page and are easy to rank i use HitTail: The Best Long Tail Keyword Tool beside that if you already have a list of keywords what you can do is worki8ng first on the long tails building links for them to build authority as well once authority is build you are surely going to get a push on your short keywords + till then getting complete advantage of your long tail keywords
-
Go to your google analytics and see if any of the organic search keywords align with keywords on your list.
Run ranking reports on the ones that do. Note pages that are getting search traffic for terms on your list but that are not at the top of the search results.
Review the pages that are receiving the search traffic for those terms to see how well they're optimized.
Start first with the pages that are least optimized, getting traffic, and are on page three, two or bottom of page one of the results. Optimize those pages for most closely aligned keywords
It's called low-hanging fruit.
-
lol thanks
-
I know how that goes :(. Good luck!
-
yes of course. i am just in the process of creating a new strategy though and fixing some of the stuff the person before me messed up.
-
How do you focus on keywords without being spammy? Backlink anchor text? Guest post title tags? keyword proximity to your backlink?
-
Hi Dave,
Yes I am doing something similar, most of these keywords are for different pages. Obviously all the pages will be optimized to the keywords specific to that page, but i am wanting to pick 10 keywords to focus on and rank for with their respective pages. Rather than focusing on everything and building links all at once, I want to focus on 10 at a time, set goals and measure the results, then maintain those results and work on the next 10.
-
Hmm, I seem to take a different approach than most here. I look at each page and see which of my keywords will match up to that specific content. I don't use a top keyword list unless I'm optimizing the homepage. I hardly ever look at competition when placing keywords on the content pages of the site. I ALWAYS look at competition when looking for long-tail blog post type keywords. I used to use 5 different tools to look at competition, but then I realized that you really only need one metric - the allintitle: "keyword." If the allintitle is below 2000 you can rank 1st page with the keyword being furthest to the left in the title tag pretty easily. If it's higher than 2000 the keyword you choose dosn't really matter. It's going to come down to off-site SEO.
-
One strategy is feeding KW terms into Google Trends and figuring out interest levels. Next, figure out the total amount of sites ranking for that string (via quotes in a Google search). Once you have these two data points you can prioritize the string as you have a good indication of interest/competition.
-
Thank you
-
Great answer thank you
-
I would look at what you already have ranking and quality phrases which are coming up in the search and need that extra attention to get them onto the first page and also factor in:
Level of Competition
Potential Traffic / current traffic
The quality of content on site you have to work off of
That would tell you which short tails you have a shot at and if they are out of reach or already ranking, start taking a look at the next most valuable long tail terms
-
Hi Stephanie,
I'd say pulling your analytics data for keywords you're getting long tail traffic for that you're ranking for on the first page (not in top 2 spots) and prioritizing that against your rankings data (whether its from SEOMoz, Advanced Web Ranking etc) using Vlookups in Excel
If you're estimating potential traffic, you can export Adwords keyword data for potential traffic (very rough estimate) to get an idea of what kind of traffic you could potentially be getting
An excellent resource would be http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/#vlookup to start off with.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Rewriting content dilemma? should i include keywords ?
hi, i am rewriting content since it had 300 words , lower than top 10s i did some keywords research, on ahrefs, moz, keywordtool . io, semrush. and there are lot of variations like, main keyword is (ios 12) has variations like (ios 12 download), (ios 12 install), (ios 12 not supported) and so on, people have been searching all these terms with ios 12, it feels like if my page talks about all these variations. i have more chances to rank. does it make any sense?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Subdomain optimization - advices
Hi, I need some specific advices on which is the best way to optimize the subdomain of a main domain. Besides meta title, description, etc. Br.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar0 -
Is this over optimization??
I have blog website – packforcity.com, all articles were having almost same title tags (as need of the website) I only change the city name for example What to Wear in Miami in February What To Wear In Dubai In February What To Wear In Budapest In February What to Wear in Beijing in February What to Wear in Los Angeles in January What to Wear in Miami in January What to Wear in Las Vegas in January Is this over optimization?? Before December, My all keywords were ranked on the first page and my old articles still ranked, but my January and February articles (newly posted articles) were ranked No where in Google. Has my website hit by google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Meta Keywords Good or Bad
Hi All, I've been reading more about the meta keyword tag and why it may not be a good idea to include them on pages and am looking for thoughts/feedback on this idea. If you have employed this tactic, can you give me some insight into any results you saw. If you decided to not employ this tactic, why did you choose not to? I wan to understand all sides of this before employing any changes to my company's websites. Thank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | airnwater0 -
Correct strategy for long-tail keywords?
Hi, We are selling log houses on our website. Every log house is listed as a "product", and this "product" consists of many separate parts, that are technically also products. For example a log house product consists of doors, windows, roof - and all these parts are technically also products, having their own content pages. The question is - Should we let google index these detail pages, or should we list them as noindex? These pages have no content, only the headline, which are great for long-tail SEO. We are probably the only manufacturer in the world who has a separate page for "log house wood beam 400x400mm". But otherwise these pages are empty. My question is - what should we do? Should we let google index them all (we have over 3600 of them) and maybe try to insert an automatic FAQ section to every one of them to put more content on the page? Or will 3600 low-content pages hurt our rankings? Otherwise we are ranking quite well. Thanks, Johan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohanMattisson0 -
Keyword density for a website
I wanna make landing pages for my web site .going to write 500 words article but how about keyword density .i wanna insert 4 keywords into that article.looking for expert advices .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Google and keywords with and without accents. How to approach optimization for both?
This is more of a problem for people optimizing for keywords in spanish, french, german and such. It is well known that SERPs for keywords with and without accents are different. However, I haven't been able to discover how do I make the incorrectly misspelled keywords rank without messing up the site's content. Another fact to take into account is that more than half the searches made in these languages are done without accents because, let's face it, it's just too much work. An example of my specific problem: The misspelled keyword "cursos de ingles" is currently ranking higher than the correctly spelled keyword "cursos de inglés". However, the misspelled keyword "clases de ingles" is not ranking at all and the correctly spelled keyword "clases de inglés" is on the first page. How is this possible? Now, how can I optimize the misspelled keywords to rank higher without misspelling the content on my site? Thank you! Capture.PNG
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 7decode0 -
Keyword-Rich Domains - Redirect?
Hi, Mozzers- I have a client that has a bunch of pretty nice keyword-rich domain names. Their traffic and rankings are good. They provide legal services in the Chicago area. I have lots of good content that I could use to start a blog using a domain like keyword,keyword-blog.com. Good idea? Currently I have a resources area on their website but feel like this area could be getting a little bloated and some news-related stuff isn't really appropriate. 2 Questions: Should I use one of the decent domains for a blog and build up the rankings, traffic, and link to the main site? Or is this lots of work for little payout? Both sites would be hosted in the cloud. Some of the domain names are related to their name, others are keyword or geo-targeted. Would it be wise to setup 301 redirects going to their website? Pros/cons? If you need additional info, please PM me for details. Thank you, friends! LHC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lhc670