Ranking for combined version of keyword but not separated version
-
Hi All,
My site is currently ranking on page 1 for the term "golfholidays" but is ranking at the bottom of page 3 for the term I am targeting and have optimised for, which is "golf holidays". Does anyone have any experience with the combined keyword ranking above the singular version? Nowhere on my page doesn't it mention the term "golfholidays" and backlinks to my site mostly use the anchor "golf holdiays"
Thanks!
-
I'd chalk it up to being a quirk. "Golf holidays" is the keyword that actually has volume, therefore anything happening on "golfholidays" is mostly a curiosity unless you can track conversions from it. I would ignore it and keep plowing forward with your efforts to rank for the one you care about.
More likely than not you just need to keep building the authority of your site and make sure your page is well optimized for the phrase "golf holidays" and you'll get there. Most of the sites I see ranking on page 1 for that query have a decent number of links to them. 5 results are homepages which tend to have more links than internal landing pages, and the landing pages that are ranking are reasonably well targeted. As an example of what it takes to show up with a well optimized internal page with no links - British Airways (https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/destinations/holiday-types/golf-holidays) is only ranking 10th for the query with a highly authoritative site.
-
Hi Andy,
Unfortunately, this is very common. It's also the case with plural and singular keywords. If you search (in Holland, in Dutch) for second hand car, you get a different SERP than when you search for second hand car_s_.
The site that ranks position #1 for the singular search, ranks on position #6 for the plural version. All the sites in the top 5 are sites with second hand cars, so there is no different intent in the search.
I'm afraid that there is not much you can do about it.... Maybe somebody else has a different experience?
Kind regards,
Robert
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
-
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Google ranking my site abroad, how to stop?
Hi Mozzers, I have a UK based ecommerce site, that sells only to the UK. Over the last month Google has started ranking my site on foreign flavours of Google, so I keep getting traffic coming to my site from Europe, America and the far east that we could never sell to, and as a result bounce is going up and engagement is going down. They are definitely coming to the site from google searches that relate to my product type, but in regions I do not service. Is there a way to stop google doing this? I have the target set to UK in WMT, but is there anything else I can do? I worried about my UK ranking being damaged by an increasing overall bounce rate. Thanks
Technical SEO | | FDFPres0 -
What Would i do to get my site ranking high?
Hello Friends, I need your help please tell me what would I do to get my site ranking high in Google search engine. When I start my work on my site my work blog commenting , social bookmarking, keyword targeting etc.… But now the scene is completely changing. Now I am working on just guest blogging. I don’t understand that what would I do next after the guest blogging. Because I think there is now just one way to promote your site VIA guest blogging. Now please tell me is there any other option to work and get high ranking?
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Sudden drop in rank and OSE index
I had improved the rank of chairmats.net from page 3 to top of page 2 in Google over the course of a few weeks using on-page, content building, and "low-hanging fruit" link building. All the sudden in the last 2 weeks, we have dropped to 22nd, have dropped out of the OSE index (chairmats.net doesn't show up, but some old links to www.chairmats.net show up), and PA is now 1. DA wasn't high before but also dropped a point. I don't know why the sudden shun (I read about an exact keyword match for low quality websites update with Google recently, but this site has been around for awhile, and is a large supplier of chair mats.) I'm working on getting quality links, it seems a little tougher for a supplier company like this. Any suggestions on recovering?
Technical SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
Ranking via partial match
If I wanted to rank for "red hot widgets" and my domain was redhot.com, would it be better to obtain backlinks (via "red hot widgets" anchor text) pointing to: A) redhot.com (homepage) or B) redhot.com/widgets Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc0 -
Does duplicate content on word press work against the site rank? (not page rank)
I noticed in the crawl that there seems to be some duplicate content with my word press blog. I installed a seo plugin, Yoast's wordpress seo plugin, and set it to keep from crawling the archives. This might solve the problem but my main question is can the blog drag my site down?
Technical SEO | | tommr10 -
Would this be considered keyword cannabalization?
If I have an article, titled 7 signs of unhealthy eating and the title tag for five different pages looks like this: keyword | article title ex: Binge Eating | 7 Signs of Unhealthy Eating ex: Lack of Fruits & Vegetables | 7 Signs of Unhealthy Eating etc, etc.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0