Assesing which keywords to target
-
Hi Looking for some advice:
Situation: Starting and SEO campaign for the French market. We have extensive keyword data from our adwords account as this has been running for a few months.
Questions:
-
What should we be looking out for in relations to keywords to target in the seo campaign?
-
How many keywords is it sensible to target or chase? (one person dedicated to the French seo campaign)
Thanks for your help,
Andrew
-
-
Hi Andrew -
I've found in extensive paid / organic keyword optimization synchronization, that well-written supporting content tends to take care of the long tail pretty effectively, so for synching paid/non-paid optimization, I use the following approach:
In selecting specific paid keywords to target for improved SEO, trying to optimize for too many keywords can end up diluting your overall organic results, depending partly on site structure and site focus. I generally look at the top-ten best performing keywords for each ad group over time - which should correspond to fairly granular / specific categories, subcategories or landing pages of a website. Then, based upon user behavior, conversions, and average CPC, I generally most specifically optimize for the top five, then include more depending upon overall search interest, etc. Solid SEO and high-quality, relevant supporting content for your most expensive paid keywords, should not only help support your organic results, but it should also help to keep your CPC costs down as much as possible by contributing to solid landing page Quality Scores (since QS is a factor affecting CPC).
The optimal end result is to have your website show up above the fold on search results pages for both paid and organic searches for key terms. This is relatively easy to do for more obscure terms / long tail terms, but can be pretty challenging for extremely competitive terms / when competing with older, more established sites. This is why I'll devote more time to optimizing for the keywords / key phrases which more difficult to rank well for.
So, bottom line, I work to keep SEM costs in check and keep a site in front of customer / reader eyeballs by optimizing for the most popular, most expensive, best performing keywords / key phrases. If 90% of traffic comes from <10% of keywords, and I can have a site rank well w/ minimal effort for the other 90% of key words / key phrases capturing traffic, then I'm going to spend the most effort on the 10% or less that bring the most traffic. (And yes, I realize this goes against quite a bit of "optimize for the long tail" discussion - but I do a lot of SEO+SEM in synch, and targeting the long tail can become counterproductive to down right detrimental in paid search. I find that good content will nail the long tail consistently - so it takes care of itself.)
-
Without more details about what you are doing, it is hard to get detailed. Keeping it simple....You are looking for low hanging fruit.
1.) They should be keywords that are converting/call to action keywords. If you have the adwords data and performance already then you will know what they are. But it is common sense: the example would be if you sell apples. Apple as a keyword is good. Buy apples is better.
2.) That would be keywords that have lower competition and have a moderate amount of traffic. For example: if you have two separate keywords and one is 30,000 clicks a month and one is 1,000 clicks a month, then your 30,000 clicks a month should be more competitive....you have a higher likelihood of being able to rank higher in the less competitive, 1,000 clicks a month.
3.) variation with long tail keywords:. if you have long tail keywords that are very competitive and are derivations of other keywords that you think are important, they should rank higher in importance. For example. If you are selling diet plans. And you have 2 long tail keywords that work: "buying organic diet plans" buying organic food for diet". The first word is a more valuable keyword because it contains another more refined keyword that has value.
Your last question related to number of keywords is no easy answer. You should have as many keywords as you can manage. No set limit. But make sure in your ad groups that you have isolated like keywords as that will increase your relevancy and quality score from google.
Hope this helps
-
Hey Andrew,
Let’s start this way… you have the data of keywords that you have extracted from the Adwords campaign. This is great if you can extract all the keywords that are most convertible in terms of conversions.
Step 2 would be to list down the keywords and notice the traffic, difficulty level and competition each keyword contains and then on the basis of total traffic, difficulty level and conversion rate list down the keywords accordingly. Ideally it should be from highest returns to lowest returns…
Now you have the data so target the keywords that are most convertible… it depends on the resources of how many keywords you should target and what resources should do what!
Hope that helps!
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 Ranking
I would like to understand how to search for all instances where Johansens is on the 1st page of Google (US/UK) for any keywords that have Portugal, Lisbon or Algarve in them i.e. "luxury hotels portugal". Is there an easy/automated way to do such a search? Many thanks for your support, Doug
Keyword Research | | CN_Johansens0 -
Homepage keyword changing strategy
Hi! We're a spanish construction company and we've been positioning our home with the keyword "wooden homes". We also have a specific landing page positioned with that same keyword. Right now we are getting out of a penguin and panda penalization and we're doing well. As part of a rebranding strategy we are thinking of changing our homepage keyword to "luxury homes". We are still going to hace the "wooden houses" landing page but this keyword is just going to be present in its own landing. The new keyword has much more volume of search than the one we have right now. Is there a strategy you can recomend us for this rebranding? Thanks
Keyword Research | | Canexel0 -
Which keyword for title
I'm trying to figure out what to use for my title text. It's for a structural steel fabrication company. Adwords has the average monthly searches for "structural steel" and "steel fabrication" identical at 5,400. It has "structural steel fabrication" at 390 which I get that since its longer and a little more specific will have less searches. My question is if I make the title "structural steel fabrication" does google just see it as 1 big keyword or will it rank for "structural steel" and/or "steel fabrication"? What would any of you go with here? All 3 keyword strings make sense for the person seeing the title. Thanks for any advice you can give, Clay
Keyword Research | | clayknight0 -
Google Keyword Tool alternatives?
Does anyone have any suggestions for Google Keyword Tool alternatives, since is has been closed by Google? Thanks
Keyword Research | | BoomDialogue690 -
Bulk keyword competition tool?
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool is great, but the 5 keyword limit is too small. I need a tool that will allow checking the organic competition level of 100's of keywords (to help in selecting blog topics). Anyone know of such a tool?
Keyword Research | | AdamThompson1 -
Keyword Search
Keyword search How low is too low for choosing to use a key phrase for one of your articles, website pages, etc. I see some with 100 local and global searches. Is this too low to really be spending the time working on this key phrase?
Keyword Research | | sansonj1 -
How to target very broad, umbrella keywords on the homepage
Hey there SEO Mozzers, I'm new to the SEO Moz community and would genuinely appreicate any advice/input on this topic. I'm part of the online marketing team for a UK-based site called Tendea.co.uk. We operate an introductory platform for enabling the connection between parents and families seeking care services (childcare, pet care, senior care, home & garden care, etc.) and individuals providing care services (babysitters, nannies, pet sitters, housekeepers, etc.). To take a US site for comparison, the services are very similar to those offered by Care.com I'm currently having a bit of difficulty as to what very broad, umbrella keywords we should be targeting for the homepage, primarily in the meta title/description. We've started with keywords such as "care, family services, care services, and family care", but I think these terms are almost too generic and aren't necessarily terms we really want to be ranking for. I suggested to our in-house SEO team that we just target some of our strongest keywords from each of the individual care categories for the homepage (babysitter, pet sitter, housekeeper, caregiver, etc.). They were against this idea, though, as we have separate subfolders that target the individual care categories and their specific keywords (tendea.co.uk/childcare, /pet-care, /elderly-care, etc.) Essentially the argeument is that we don't want to be targeting these terms on the homepage and on a separate subfolder page, as then the two pages would be competing for each other's keywords. Instead we're being encouraged to find some sort of umbrella terms to target for the home page that can encompass all of the care categories. For comparison's sake, I took a look at Care.com's meta data and it targets all their specific keywords for the various care categories "Babysitters, nannies, Child Care & Senior Home care - Care.com". Is this the right kind of strategy to take, or do you guys have any suggestions for much broader, umbrella keywords to target on our homepage? Thanks in advance for your input! -Mike
Keyword Research | | Tendea0 -
Google Keyword Estimator
Hello Does the Google traffic estimator include the impact of instant? For example, if I type the phrase "London restaurant", instant may provide a list of search results for the phrase "London restaurant guide" prior to me confirming whether or not I just want to search using the phrase "London restaurant". Is this registered in any way as a search for the phrase "London restaurant guide" (i.e. does Instant impact upon the search volumes presented in the Google traffic estimator)? In addition, is there any up to date assessment on how reliable the revised traffic estimator is? The tool currently suggests that for a well known brand we are working for does not have any search volume (over a whole year) for the brand keyphrase when used in isolation (there is traffic for various combinations of the brand and a generic term). However, as one would expect, our analytics data is showing that there are in excess of 1 million annual visitors that use the brand keyphrase in isolation to access the website via natural search and nearly 1.5 million via PPC. Is anyone else getting these problems? Thanks in advance for any assistance. Rgds Neil
Keyword Research | | mccormackmorrison1