Why do small changes in keyword phrasing have such big SERP impacts?
-
I am trying to better understand why some of my pages rank well and some don't rank at all. I've discovered that slight changes to how the key phrase is typed into Google can have dramatic effects on the results. Why is this? And how should I interpret it or use it? I understand that some phrases will be more competitive than others, but that doesn't seem to explain the variances entirely.
For example, http://traveltipsthailand.com/phuket/best-bachelor-hotels-in-phuket/ (which is SEO optimised for the long-tail phrase "bachelor hotels in Phuket" and "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in Phuket") ranks #1 or #2 for the key phrase "bachelor hotels phuket", but if I modify the phrase slightly to "bachelor hotels IN phuket" it drops to #12 (page 2) with less relevant competitors (like "Bachelor hotels in Chiang Mai") getting in ahead of it.
Likewise, if I search on "best bachelor hotels phuket" (the URL phrase of the page) it is #1 or #2 again, but if I modify the search phrase to "best bachelor hotels IN phuket", my SERP drops to #13.
If I use the longer-tail key phrase "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" the results are even more dramatic. I rank #5 for that phrase in the SERPs with or without "IN" in the search phrase. But if I remove "bachelor" from the key phrase and just search on "girl-friendly hotels in phuket" my page drops right off the SERP radar. Somewhere above #200 I think.
Would love to get a better understanding of what influences these changes if anyone really knows. Is it just Goovoodoogle or is there a logical explanation?
-
For anyone who's still interested, my SEO ranking for "bachelor hotels phuket" and "bachelor hotels IN phuket" has now equalised. Both now rank #1 on Google, but neither send very much traffic my way. Still, an interesting exercise.
-
Thanks for the detailed comment. Appreciate your time in doing this. I don't think I am "obsessing over the wrong metrics" at all, just trying to understand what I am getting from these premium reports. The bottom line for me in reporting is that if you can't understand the report, you either need to know more or there's something wrong with it. And in this case, I can't understand the report. So are you saying the report is flawed?
As a matter of interest, I have been using this data to experiment with Google long-tail SERPs over the past few weeks and I learn something new every month. I have actually eliminated the difference the word "in" made in the key phrase and now rank equally well for the phrase with and without "in". But using the Moz keyword ranking report to analyse why this has happened reveals very little.
-
The thing the sites beating you in the SERPs for competitive phrases are doing differently than you is that they aren't obsessing over the wrong metrics. Things like KDS, DA and PA are useful in giving us a ballpark overview of the competitive landscape, including who might be worth trying to earn a link from. They do not always have perfect, or even strong, correlations with what you see in Google. For example, the MozScape crawler isn't set up to detect paid links or spam links. Where Google might ignore, or even punish you, for certain links, MozScape still gives a site credit for them. This "qualitative" value on links is one of the reasons Google has won the search game so far. It is very difficult to replicate at the scale of the entire internet.
The reason nobody can answer your question is because it is pretty much unanswerable. There are too many variables. Maybe if we had a look at your site, and your competitors sites, we could come up with an educated guess.
For the keyword that you drop straight back to approximately #200 for you may want to look into an anchor-text level link penalty, possibly due to too many links, or even just a few "untrusted" links with that exact anchor text going into that page.
-
So I'm still struggling to really understand the keyword rankings reports I get from Moz Pro and what actions I can take from those reports. Here's an example:
I am looking at a keyword ranking history for the key phrase "Thailand scams". I have a post about this which appears at #46 in the Google USA SERPs and I'd obviously like to improve that positioning (I now have nearly 20 key phrases in top 50 positions, but few are really valuable - this one potentially is).
So I read the ranking report and it says keyword difficulty is 37% (achievable) and I am on the rise at the moment. How do I capitalise on that? The post that's listing in the SERPs has only 1 linking domain and a Page Authority of 14. My overall site authority is around 27, so I guess I can improve my PA by careful cross-linking from some other pages that have higher PA? And, of course, I can try to get some quality backlinks for this key phrase to this post.
But as I look at those ahead of me in the SERPs for this phrase, they are not necessarily doing those things. So what gets them ahead of me? The listing at #5 has 1 backlink and a PA of 19. The page at #29 has one backlink and a PA of 15. And the page at #40 has one backlink and a PA of 14, just like mine. What makes those pages list ahead of mine in the SERPs?
At least in this instance all the pages ahead of mine are actually about the same topic! Good for you Mr Google, you got one right. But how do I learn from this report?
-
From what I am seeing, John, it seems more likely that a site about cats with high DA can outrank a site about dogs with low DA on the search term "dogs" or "puppies". In this respect, Google seems to suck pretty badly now.
-
It would be good to get more input to this question. I appear to be mostly answering it myself, but none the wiser for doing so.
Another example I noticed in my Moz reports today is "Understanding Thai Baht" where a post I created about currency exchange and carrying/spending money in Thailand is #1 on Google for this phrase. Google keyword analysis says there is no demand and no competition for this phrase, yet it is driving some traffic into my site and the SERPs have almost 50 million results for this phrase. If I use the other half of my page title "managing money in thailand" I disappear from the results, yet it too apparently has no demand and no competition.
It seems at the moment like I can rank very well for any phrase nobody is interested in, but I disappear in the SERPs as soon as there's any level of competition - even from sites that are almost totally unrelated to the query.
-
DA and PA is worked out by SEOMoz, it is not the same as how SE's would do it. Its just a guideline. There are also other factors. a website about dogs with low DA, may outrank a website about cats with high DA for the term puppies.
It may be that one site is seen as more relevant than the other, or do better in some other factor.
-
That's actually a useful clue. I was close to thinking that, but had not quite got there. Using the Moz keyword research tool, I can see that:
-
"bachelor hotels phuket" has a KDS of 22
-
"bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 59, so much more difficult to rank for.
-
"girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 29
-
"girl-friendly hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 58, so again more difficult to rank for.
Unfortunately it seems the search volume scores fetcher is broken at the moment (must be missing a spline) so I can't see whether ranking for these easier keywords is worthwhile or not. It has been from a traffic perspective, anyway.
But that's not the full story, of course. The attached image shows the detailed Moz ranking analysis for "bachelor hotels phuket" and what's really interesting about this is that my page, with a PA of just 13 and a DA of just 27, is out-ranking pages with a PA of 30 and 38 and DA of up to 97. I guess that's Google being democratic in small spaces?
If I spent 50 credits on the "full report" at this point, would I find out much more about the situation? Not sure if it's worth spending the 50 credits here or not.
The second attached image is perhaps even more revealing (or at least intriguing). When "IN" is added to the search phrase, my PA=13, DA=27 page is being out-ranked by four URLs that have a PA=1 and no backlinks, although they do mostly have higher DA. The page ranking above mine, however, has a PA=1 and DA=13, with only 2 backlinks to my 34. How does it rank ahead of me for this phrase???
Sometimes the more I know the less I understand.
-
-
I think you were correct in the first place, there are probably many more pages using the "IN" in their content, so more compeditive
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
-
Apostrophes impact on SEO
I have a question about the use of Apostrohes in the text of your site for your keyword. Most of the info I have found says in most cases it does not matter, but it depends. Most of the info about this issue I have found is a few years old. I am leaning towards not using it at all to make it easier for everyone writing for the website to always do it the same way. Here is an example: Lawyer’s Lawyers' Lawyers Does it matter if I use the apostrophe?
Keyword Research | | fersu0 -
Long tail keyword
Hi, What the the most useful long tail keyword tools you use for your adwords? Thanks for any insight.
Keyword Research | | LauraHT0 -
New Keyword Planning Tool
In the past we have used google analytics keyword tool to evaluate a keyword for our campaign. Recently though with the changes to the keyword tool becoming the keyword planning tool we've seen an extreme fluctuation in the metrics provided for avg monthly searches. Specifically the keyword "best fries" used to be reported at 33100 avg global monthly searches, now with the new tool its at less than 200 overall for the month. Additional information has the google trends for the keyword to only be increasing and is roughly near peak search interest. So I guess to simplify the question, should I trust this metric? Is there an alternative source I can use for keyword research? Why would a drop like this happen? Why isn't the google trends data similar to that of the keyword data? Surely 100 representing peak interest doesn't translate to 200 searches a month.
Keyword Research | | JamesBSEO0 -
Keyword limit??
So is it right we are only allowed 300 keywords across all campaigns? if this is right how are we suppose to work with this? is there a way to make it higher?
Keyword Research | | OasisLandDevelopment0 -
Narrowing keywords or build more pages - Startup
I provide local services to a number of small cities and am trying to decide the best way to attack local keywords. I need to decide if I should target all 4 cities or narrow it down to 1 or 2. I used the google keyword tool and none of my keywords have enough results to show data so I am left guessing by using the nearest major city and population sizes. Anyway, I have read over and over about how keywords in the title / description are imperative. Well, thats tough to accomplish without being spammy when you offer two services for four cities. I don't think lakeville snow removal, apple valley snow removal, eagan snow removal makes for a good title of a page. Also, it's not an easy task to get any kind of keyword density in the content as well. So how do you recommend I attack this? I have seen sites that create a page for each keyword with basically the same content excpet replacing city x with city y and they do well. I find this spammy and hope that eventually they get penalized for it. I guess I would be willing to do it, but would prefer a more natural solution. One more question, if I do keyword a single city, say Lakeville, what is the prefered way to keyword the home page compared to the service pages. Example, I have a snow removal page that the keywords would be lakeville snow removal and a lawn care page with the same.. So what is the target for the home page? Here is the results of my keyword research. ** Monthy Google Searches** Minneapolis lawn care - 880 Minneapolis lawn service - 590 Minneapolis lawn mowing - 260 Minneapolis Snow Removal - 590 Minneapolis Snow Plowing - 320 Minneapolis Snow Removal services - 58 Service Area Data (Minni has Pop of 385K) Lakeville - Pop;56K Income;86K Apple Valley - Pop;49K Income;74K Burnsville - Pop;60K Income;60K Eagan - Pop;64K Income;74K Northfield - Pop;20K Income;62K
Keyword Research | | dwallner0 -
Keyword Analysis ranking is not according to google
I'm confused with Keyword Analysis tool because when i run it it show me like this: Keywords: Alpaca Scarves Rank 1. page1 2 page2 3 page3 4 page4 Rank 1: page1 p. authority: 26, page linking root domains: 2 domain autority: 31 root domain linking root domains: 33 Rank 4: page4 p. authority: 26, page linking root domains: 2 domain autority: 45 root domain linking root domains: 232 I think that the rank 4 should be in the 1. can you help me to understand it? Alfredo
Keyword Research | | russelgz0 -
Keyword question
In my keywords should they include the city name or not? Example..... plastic surgery or plastic surgery Orlando I know the search engine knows what city i am in, if i search for plastic surgery and i live in Orlando, does it pull up world wide plastic surgery links first or local plastic surgery clinics? Thanks in advance. Daniel
Keyword Research | | dools0 -
Keyword Targeting
If I am currently ranking well for "Lawn Mowers" and I also want to target "Cheap Lawn Mowers" will it affect my ranking for "Lawn Mowers" if I change my on page optimization by adding "Cheap" to the title, H1, etc. or will it effectively target both.
Keyword Research | | UK2Group0