Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I exclude prepositions in tracked keywords of moz analytics?
-
I'm new to Moz. Just set up my trial campaign, and it had suggested many keywords. Many of the phrases that were suggested do not contain prepositions.
For example, instead of something like "sporting good stores in Chicago" it suggested "sporting good stores Chicago"
Today, I looked at the on-page optimization suggestions, which are (of course) suggesting that I remove prepositions from my page to rank well.
Well, as you know, that is unnatural to the reader. But I suspect people are searching in higher volume, leaving the prepositions out. I know that if I were to search for a sporting goods store in Chicago, I would probably leave out "in."
What should I do? Should I remove all the suggested keywords, and make them readable (which people are less like using in their search?) Do I go back to all my pages and try to optimize it for a keyword that is natural, but does not include a preposition (such as Chicago sporting goods stores) or should I be doing something else?
-
I agree with Joey. Most prepositions are stop words, so they may carry less weight in the search algorithm. That's not to say they aren't important. I just searched "sporting goods stores in Atlanta" and "sporting goods stores Atlanta" and got very slightly different results for each.
The on page optimization suggestions are just suggestions to point you in the right direction based on keywords you entered into the tool. You should never sacrifice usability for your readers in order to satisfy an SEO tool. The tool is just a starting point.
-
I would say let your keyword research do the talking. The tried and true method is to use your "seed" keywords, gather all the suggestions you can, measure which keywords hold the most value for you, and look for the opportunities. If one of your best opportunities has prepositions in it, there is your answer. I'm willing to bet you'll find valuable keywords that use them.
My observation is they don't carry much weight, but with voice searching on mobile, searches can be much more "conversational" when spoken into Siri or Google voice search. We tend to keep things short when we have to type it in, right? There is also Google's Hummingbird update, semantic search and natural language processing. WordStream did a great blog on this right after Google's Hummingbird update. I highly recommend you read the whole article. Here's an especially relevant quote:
"You only have to look at how accurate Google Now has become since its introduction to see that natural language processing is going to remain a major part of Google’s plans for search."
Overall, I'd use the prepositions. Natural language is important, sounds better, and the data is probably there suggesting you should keep it.
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
-
Unsolved Why is my website Backlinks Lower on Moz than on SEMRush?
Hi, I'm new to Moz and I am trying to find out why my website Birmingham Roofers has 7 backlinks on Moz it has 21 on SEMRush. However, I read somewhere online in one of your blog post that it crawls in real time.
Moz Bar | | ajegunle1 -
If we put the disavow links in google, does MOZ crawl the same links?
I have put bad or spam links in disavow file, but still showing in MOZ backlinks. So, I want to know that Why is MOZ not removing the spam links from their system?
Moz Bar | | insidewebanalytics0 -
Search volume discrepancies between keyword tools
I'm feeling like I'm basing all my research time on tools that I cannot necessarily trust. Between Google keyword planner, Keywords everywhere chrome extension, and Moz keyword explorer, I'm getting wildly different results on 2 simple keywords related to colleges with baking & pastry arts degrees. "baking college", "baking colleges" So Keyword planner won't give me any search volume for those 2 words, I don't even see them in the results. Instead, it decides I really meant "baker college" which has 33,100 global searches. I tried telling it use only closely related terms, but it keeps giving me "baker college" and refuses to show me the terms I asked for. Stubbornly useless. Keywords everywhere says both of these keywords bring in 33,100 searches. It does not tell me those searches were for "baker college." Totally misleading. Moz keyword explorer says baking college as 0-10 volume, baking colleges has 101-200 volume. So at least it's not trying to give me "baker college" numbers. Perhaps I can trust this, but it's not convenient to upload hundreds of various keywords at a time to pull the volume numbers like I do with the other tools. With Keyword planner making assumptions and grouping unrelated terms together, and Keywords everywhere using those numbers without pointing out the assumptions, I feel like I can't trust anything without taking time to dig into the discrepancies, which is impossible with hundreds of keywords. Do you know of any good search volume tools that don't force or hide assumptions? Thanks.
Moz Bar | | JannetteP1 -
Moz Bar doesn't show any data and keeps asking me to log in when actually I'm logged in.
Hi all, I've been using Moz Bar for years. It ran well until about three weeks ago. It suddenly failed to show the DA and PA of sites that I open after I log in. And it keeps asking me to log in when I did. I tried to uninstall the Mozbar extension and reinstalled it several times. Nothing worked. I also tried to uninstall Chrome and clear the cookies, still, nothing changed. Did anyone experience this? How do you solve it and make it run on the track? Any information will be appreciated. [admin edited support category]
Moz Bar | | Bennie223310 -
Does "Disallow: /xmlrpc.php" in robots.txt affect moz tools ability to fetch DA?
Just checked a website for Domain Authority using Moz' tool, however it returned 1 for DA, which should be unlikely. I have been trying to find the problem and found "Disallow: /xmlrpc.php" in robots.txt. Could this affect Moz' tools ability to get the required data?
Moz Bar | | Foli0 -
National or local tracking of keywords
I manage an account with +20 locations and have used the default National tracking on keywords, but realized that we might see higher rankings if I choose local tracking. If any of you have any experience in this, please tell the world!
Moz Bar | | peterpumkineater0 -
How do you stop Moz crawling a page?
Hello, I have a contact form which generates thousands of duplicate crawl errors. I'm going to use to block Google indexing these pages. Will this also block MOZ from crawling these pages and displaying the error? Thanks!
Moz Bar | | Seaward-Group0 -
Is Moz Analytics still available to all MozCon attendees?
I thought all Mozcon attendees were going to get access to Moz Analytics even after the convention was over. I can't seem to find were to access it from my campaigns manager dashboard and the Analytics landing page says im on queue to get access.
Moz Bar | | AmberHanson0