How to rank 1 page for multiple keywords in the new way
-
Hi There
It has been a little while since I was involved with KW's in earnest. 1.5 years ago and beyond I did really well with SEO. I'm not in a hugely competitive market but we found our keywords, we wrote great web pages for 1,2,3 keywords and when we found more great keywords that we built a new page to rank for. For example:
One big hitting keyword was "Rugged PDA", we created a category page for Rugged PDA's. Another was "Rugged Handheld" so we had a new page for that. We then long tailed "semi rugged PDA", "waterproof rugged PDA" etc etc and built sub category pages. We were legit, did lots of content marketing, ran a blog tweeted etc and we did really well to be honest.
However these days it's not working, One of Rand's whiteboard sessions stated that you need to build bigger topic based pages that delivered on more keywords (The one about shoes!).
This is great as we love that idea as we can have 1 big category page that offers great value to the visitor, however I am struggling to work out how we target a bigger list of keywords to the one page or to fewer pages. To underline this the MOZ page rankers also still seem to work in the same way where they expect 1 or 2 KW's per page to get A ranks to them, so I'm confused!!
For example Rugged PDA is an old term, Google trends is showing that it's glory days are over and we know that the term "Rugged Smartphone" is the one to use as we all use smartphones not PDAs these days. However we also see a lot about Rugged + Phone, Mobile, Cell, Handheld, tablet, device, phablet... all relevant to one big category page.
So I run these KW's through google search to see if the same pages come up as a test to see if Google thinks they all mean the same, I get a few, but not much overlap. How do we therefore have 1 page that talks about all kinds of great stuff about the "Rugged smartphone" but one that also targets rugged handheld, rugged android device etc etc?
I've spent 2 days catching up, i'm none the wiser on this specific element but i'm sure I am just missing one key element of common sense here and any help is very much appreciated.
Regards
Dave
-
You are very welcome
-Andy
-
Thanks for your help Andy, it has been been very helpful.
-
The best thing you could do Dave is decide on what you want to write, but don't focus on keywords too heavily otherwise it could sound very odd. Look at the subject as a whole and delve in.
Here are a few articles that will give you some ideas...
Just keep in mind that you are writing for your audience, not Google. Research your subject heavily as this will help make the work more accurate.
With regards the keywords, you will need to do some keyword research and add in supporting content. For example, if you are talking about Cats, you would talk about different breeds, life span, history, etc.
-Andy
-
TY for getting back to me. that was a great help,
OK, so I get that. Maybe a case of reading in to this more than I need to, just get on and pick the keywords and see how it goes with some in reserve to tweak, swap and test with.
So lots of pages all designed to land 1 or 2 keywords on is now bad.
But am I right in saying that the converse is now true so that if you have 2 pages with different content on it but it turns out they are optomised for the same meaning keywords (although different ones specifically) then you could in fact be doing the wrong thing? What I mean by that is that you could be seen as having 2 pages that are effectively delivering the same content as perceived by the search engines.
I guess for people who have always been used to making good content, this is actually better as you can just focus on the content rather than having to split that out for each page/KW combination.
Dave
-
Hi Dave,
You aren't really missing anything as one point you make here...
How do we therefore have 1 page that talks about all kinds of great stuff about the "Rugged smartphone" but one that also targets rugged handheld, rugged android device etc etc?
You have kind of answered your own question here. Of course, your Page Title has a limited number of words available to you, so you need to focus heavily on the page content itself. You want to talk about rugged phones, that is fine - mention in detail, Android devices, iPhones, link out to reputable sources as citations, build supporting content and any of your own insights.
Use these other keywords in the page, but don't overuse them as that will land you in trouble.
There is no secret really, just a good dollop of research and writing - if you target the phrase 'Rugged Handset' you will find Google can return your page even though this isn't mentioned in the title. G is very good at matching searches with intent and will pick up on what you talk about.
-Andy
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
-
Why is my inner pages ranking higher than main page?
Hi everyone, for some reason lately i have discovered that Google is ranking my inner pages higher than the main subfolder page. www.domain.com/subfolder --> Target page to be ranked
Technical SEO | | davidboh
www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus ---> page that is currently ranking Also in the SERP most of the time, it is showing both links in this manner. www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus
-----------www.domain.com/subfolder Thanks in advance.1 -
Keyword cannibalisation - Any way to find out who is eating who?
I have a question regarding some keywords in my site. For some reason, I am ranking for the wrong keyword in some SERPs or my top page is ranking instead. Example: graphic design is ranking for web design Is there any tool or way to figure out how, why or who is eating each other up so to speak? Would you have any advice or links to good sources on how to resolve this issue so that the correct page shows in search for it's particular keyword? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Kuruto0 -
Bigcommerce only allows us to have https for our store only, not the other pages on our site, so we have a mix of https and http, how is this hurting us and what's the best way to fix?
So we aren't interested in paying a thousand dollars a month just to have https when we feel it's the only selling point of that package, so we have https for our store and the rest of the site blogs and all are http. I'm wondering if this would count as duplicate content or give us some other unforeseen penalty due to the half way approach of https being implemented. If this is hurting us, what would you recommend as a solution?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL?
This is for an ecommerce site, and the company I'm working with has started selling a new line of products they want to promote.Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL? One of my concerns is losing a little bit of link value from redirecting. Thank you for reading!
Technical SEO | | DA20130 -
Home page indexed but not ranking...interior pages with thin content outrank home page??
I have a Joomla site with a home page that I can't get to rank for anything beyond the company name @ Google - the site works fine @ Bing and Yahoo. The interior pages will rank all day long but the home page never shows up in the results. I have checked the page code out in every tool that I know about and have had no luck....by all account it should be good to go...any thoughts/comments/help would be greatly appreciated. The site is http://www.selectivedesigns.com Thanks! Greg
Technical SEO | | DougHosmer0 -
Assigning new separate IP for blog will harm SEO/ranking?
If i assign unique IP for my blog URL, will it hurt my ranking and seo ? Losing rank and visitor from Search engine after PANDA update
Technical SEO | | rimon56930 -
N/A page rank or "grey bar"
I have a web site that is over 10 yrs old, It also has over 30,000 links to it. Last week it received a N/A or "grey bar" page rank. The site also still is listed in the SERPS for my keywords, in fact for a few they have actually improved. The organic traffic is following the same pattern as last year. Webmaster tools doesnt list any critical issues or errors. Is there anything I can do to remedy the situation, or is this just a wait and see? Website is www.netnanny.com.
Technical SEO | | Court_H0 -
Website isn't Ranking for Any Keyword
Hi, I launched a playhouses website in april this year and have been steadily link building to it over the past few months. I have gotten all of the internal optimisation correct (that I can see) however it is still not ranking for any keyword and suprinsgly all of our traffic is comming either direct or through bing. The website is showing as being in googles index however it is still not ranking for even the smallest of niche keywords. The only penalty I can see is that we have some spammy blog links that my colleague has gotten which I have been trying to counteract with high quality guest blogging. Any input is welcome the url is http://www.playhouses.co.uk/ Simon
Technical SEO | | GardenGamer0