Is it a good idea to optimize for keywords that have no search volume if they're ranked?
-
Hello Moz Community,
I have some questions I hope some of you can help with.
We’re doing SEO work for a client that provides outsourced IT and managed IT services in Phoenix, AZ and cities in the Phoenix metro area (i.e. Glendale, Tempe, Scottsdale, etc.) They’re currently ranked for or targeting the following keywords:
• consulting phoenix az (1)
• outsourced it phoenix (2)
• phoenix it support (3)
• it services Scottsdale (5)
• it consulting firm phoenix (targeting)
• it solutions phoenix (targeting)We have recommended the following keywords based on monthly search totals, competitive level and difficulty ratings in Moz.
• IT consulting phoenix
• it consultant company
• outsourced it
• it support services
• it consulting services
• outsourcing it
• outsourced tech supportQuestions
1. While I know it’s a good idea to optimize for keywords that you're currently ranked for, there’s no search volume for any of these. So, I recommended non-geo versions since Google provides search results based on the user’s location. Will this preserve the company's current rankings?
2. If not optimizing for their current keywords will hurt their rankings, will using the current keywords as secondary keywords suffice? If so, do we need to include them in the content for keyword density?
3. Since search engine algorithms now focus so heavily on user intent, I assume we’re covered for all variations of a keyword (i.e. outsource it, outsourced it, outsourcing it, etc.) Is this correct?
4. They want to rank for “cloud services” and “cloud solutions.” Both are very competitive with high difficulty rankings. So, I recommended “cloud migration” and “cloud strategy” as alternatives since these are the main services they provide. Will including “cloud services” and “cloud solutions” as secondary keywords help them increase their rankings for both?If you’ve dealt with a similar situation, I'd appreciate your insight and advice. Thanks!
-
Check if you have clicks (Search Console) associated with these search queries. Google's search volumes are rounded up and down in 10s, so 0 really just means less than 5. You may be surprised to find that some of these keywords bring impressions or clicks to your site, despite the fact that Google says they have no searches
-
1. While I know it’s a good idea to optimize for keywords that you're currently ranked for, there’s no search volume for any of these. So, I recommended non-geo versions since Google provides search results based on the user’s location. Will this preserve the company's current rankings?
** It depends on where your ranking and if there are similar keywords that you would get volume out of?**
If there is zero search volume for those keywords you want to look at similar higher volume keywords that Google would most likely rank you for. if you're getting traffic or conversions through those keywords obviously it's important to keep them.
FYI
(I am in New England right now and the list of keywords does not have the same site ranking even on the same page as what you're suggesting above So yes Google takes your location very seriously..)
2. If not optimizing for their current keywords will hurt their rankings, will using the current keywords as secondary keywords suffice? If so, do we need to include them in the content for keyword density?
**Okay, I need what are you doing to "optimize"? If you place them in your content it depends a lot on the context and power of the content. I would also need for you to tell me the difference between what your site has for transactional keywords and informational keywords **read this post by a good friend of mine
**John Doherty **https://www.getcredo.com/keywords-rank/
3. Since search engine algorithms now focus so heavily on user intent, I assume we’re covered for all variations of a keyword (i.e. outsource it, outsourced it, outsourcing it, etc.) Is this correct?
Yes are heavily on user intent, No not all of them Use tools like answer the publicwhy outsource your it, information technology outsourcing "Information Technology", an outside company to handle your IT more see: https://answerthepublic.com/reports/fc175e7a-724b-4ad7-9c65-eeb389d4838a
https://answerthepublic.com/reports/f1583bd5-dc39-45ff-ad1f-1f16df24a279
4. They want to rank for “cloud services” and “cloud solutions.” Both are very competitive with high difficulty rankings. So, I recommended “cloud migration” and “cloud strategy” as alternatives since these are the main services they provide. Will including “cloud services” and “cloud solutions” as secondary keywords help them increase their rankings for both?
if you want to lower the odds of something being extremely broad and hard to rank for keyword like "cloud migration" use what you have going for you and that you are only servicing companies in a certain part of Arizona. So use **** (i.e. Glendale, Tempe, Scottsdale, etc.) **** and other cities at the end. "cloud migration phoenix", "_cloud services Scottsdale"_
**** Any keywords that are very close in relevancy would help your ranking yes including secondary keywords would help their ranking this all depends on the context and quality of the content as well though. Assuming that that's excellent yes it would make a big difference.****
** I hope this is been of help,**
Tom
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
-
I'm looking for a bulk way to take off from the Google search results over 600 old and inexisting pages?
When I search on Google site:alexanders.co.nz still showing over 900 results. There are over 600 inexisting pages and the 404/410 errrors aren't not working. The only way that I can think to do that is doing manually on search console using the "Removing URLs" tool but is going to take ages. Any idea how I can take down all those zombie pages from the search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexanders1 -
Ranking Spanish website in Spain, but I'm based in Australia!
| Hello guys,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wajdisawaqed
I hope you all doing well.I just signed up to this great forum to get some answers on my current SEO campaign, I hope I can find some help in here. I have very important question I hope some of SEO experts can help me please, it will mean the world to me. SO I'm trying to rank this clean,originally Spanish expired domain that I bought in Auction for big money. I added a lot of original content, some keywords start ranking already without any backlinks as the website has huge authority and a lot of quality backlinks, so now I want to start building backlinks to get my keywords on the first page. My question:
I'm a bit worry about installing Google analytics on my site as I will be using gmail account thats based in Australia as I had to use Australian phone number to verify the account. What do you think? is it safe to do that ? (having google account based in Australia linked to website that I'm trying to rank in Spain) I would really appreciate an accurate answer, if you are not sure or if you have never done it before, please don't give me any expectations, as I'm investing a lot of money in this project. Any help would be extremely appreciated my friends. The other question is:
I have bought couple of "new domains" and added some content, to add those domains to my PBN, just to mix up the link profile on my money site. How long do you wait on new domain name before you build any backlinks? I've already added content and social profiles to the new sites, I just need to know when can I start building backlinks to them to power them up as they are new. Thank you so much in advance, I'm looking forward to hear some opinions from experts. Thank you |1 -
Why is a poor optimized url ranked first on Google ?
Hi there, I've been working in SEO for more than five years and I'm always telling clients about the more than 200 factors that influence rankings, but sometimes I meet several urls or websites who haven't optimized their pages nor built links and still appear first. This is the case of the keyword "Escorts en Tenerife" in google.es. If you search that keyword in google.es you'll find this url: escortislacanarias.com... (I don't want to give them a link). My question is why the heck this url is ranking first on Google for that keyword if the url isn't optmized, the page content isn't optimized and hasn't got many or valuable incoming links? Do an on page grader to that url regarding that keyword an it gets an F !!! So there is no correlation between better optimization and good rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tintanus0 -
My New(ish) Site Isn't Ranking Well And Recently Fell
I launched my site (jesfamilylaw.com) at the beginning of January. Since then, I've been trying to build high quality back links. I have a few back links with keyword targeted anchor text from some guest posts I've published (maybe 3 or so) and I have otherwise signed up for business directories and industry-specific directories. I have a few social media profiles and some likes on Facebook, both for the company page and some posts. Despite this, I've had a lot of trouble cracking Google's top ten for any term, long or tall tail. I was starting to climb for Evanston Family Law, which is the key term I believe I am best optimized for, but took a dive yesterday. I fell from maybe the 14th result to somewhere on the 4th page. For all my other target terms, I don't know if I've gotten into the 20s yet. To further complicate matters, my Google Places listing isn't showing and is on the second page of results for Places searches, after businesses that aren't located in the same city. The night before I fell, I resubmitted my site to Google because Webmaster tools was showing duplicate title tags when I had none. I had also made a couple changes to some internal links and title tags, but only for a small fraction of the site. Long story short, I don't know what's going on. I don't know why I fell in the rankings and why my site isn't competitive for some of my target key phrases. I've read so many horror stories about Penguin that I fear my onsite optimization may be hurting my rankings or my back links are insufficient. I've done plenty of competitor research and the sites that are beating me have very aggressive onsite optimization and few back links. In short, I am very confused. Any help would be immensely appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JESFamilyLaw0 -
Our keyword rank fell drastically since our last moz crawl. What gives?
Our site was just crawled last night an we had a number of keywords fall 25% or so, from say # 30 to 38. What would cause such a drastic fall? We haven't taken down pages or changed changed page titles, url or content. One thing we are having trouble with is our meta description and meta keywords for each page. Drupal 7 seems to be giving us trouble and the meta information isn't showing up anymore. Would that cause the fall? Any other suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drudalton1 -
Does Google crawl the pages which are generated via the site's search box queries?
For example, if I search for an 'x' item in a site's search box and if the site displays a list of results based on the query, would that page be crawled? I am asking this question because this would be a URL that is non existent on the site and hence am confused as to whether Google bots would be able to find it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pulseseo0 -
Is site:domain.com + keyword a good indicator of the quality of a page?
Are the results provided by site:domain.com + keyword a good indicator of the quality of certain pages? For example, should the first result be more relevant, have a higher number of links, etc than the second result?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Ranking for our member's company names without giving them all away!
Hi, We have a directory of 25,000 odd companies who use our site. We have a strong PR site and want to rank a page for each company name. Some initial testing on one or two company names brings us to #2 after the company's own web site in the format: "Company Name Reviews and Feedback" - so it works well. We want to do this for all 25,000 of our members, however we do not wish to make it easy for our competitors to scrape through our member database!! e.g. using: www.ourdomain.com/randomstring/company-name-(profile).php unfortunately with the above performing a search on google for site:domain.com/()/()(profile).php would bring up all records. Are there any tried and tested ways of achieving what we're after here? Many Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0