Why do small changes in keyword phrasing have such big SERP impacts?
-
I am trying to better understand why some of my pages rank well and some don't rank at all. I've discovered that slight changes to how the key phrase is typed into Google can have dramatic effects on the results. Why is this? And how should I interpret it or use it? I understand that some phrases will be more competitive than others, but that doesn't seem to explain the variances entirely.
For example, http://traveltipsthailand.com/phuket/best-bachelor-hotels-in-phuket/ (which is SEO optimised for the long-tail phrase "bachelor hotels in Phuket" and "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in Phuket") ranks #1 or #2 for the key phrase "bachelor hotels phuket", but if I modify the phrase slightly to "bachelor hotels IN phuket" it drops to #12 (page 2) with less relevant competitors (like "Bachelor hotels in Chiang Mai") getting in ahead of it.
Likewise, if I search on "best bachelor hotels phuket" (the URL phrase of the page) it is #1 or #2 again, but if I modify the search phrase to "best bachelor hotels IN phuket", my SERP drops to #13.
If I use the longer-tail key phrase "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" the results are even more dramatic. I rank #5 for that phrase in the SERPs with or without "IN" in the search phrase. But if I remove "bachelor" from the key phrase and just search on "girl-friendly hotels in phuket" my page drops right off the SERP radar. Somewhere above #200 I think.
Would love to get a better understanding of what influences these changes if anyone really knows. Is it just Goovoodoogle or is there a logical explanation?
-
For anyone who's still interested, my SEO ranking for "bachelor hotels phuket" and "bachelor hotels IN phuket" has now equalised. Both now rank #1 on Google, but neither send very much traffic my way. Still, an interesting exercise.
-
Thanks for the detailed comment. Appreciate your time in doing this. I don't think I am "obsessing over the wrong metrics" at all, just trying to understand what I am getting from these premium reports. The bottom line for me in reporting is that if you can't understand the report, you either need to know more or there's something wrong with it. And in this case, I can't understand the report. So are you saying the report is flawed?
As a matter of interest, I have been using this data to experiment with Google long-tail SERPs over the past few weeks and I learn something new every month. I have actually eliminated the difference the word "in" made in the key phrase and now rank equally well for the phrase with and without "in". But using the Moz keyword ranking report to analyse why this has happened reveals very little.
-
The thing the sites beating you in the SERPs for competitive phrases are doing differently than you is that they aren't obsessing over the wrong metrics. Things like KDS, DA and PA are useful in giving us a ballpark overview of the competitive landscape, including who might be worth trying to earn a link from. They do not always have perfect, or even strong, correlations with what you see in Google. For example, the MozScape crawler isn't set up to detect paid links or spam links. Where Google might ignore, or even punish you, for certain links, MozScape still gives a site credit for them. This "qualitative" value on links is one of the reasons Google has won the search game so far. It is very difficult to replicate at the scale of the entire internet.
The reason nobody can answer your question is because it is pretty much unanswerable. There are too many variables. Maybe if we had a look at your site, and your competitors sites, we could come up with an educated guess.
For the keyword that you drop straight back to approximately #200 for you may want to look into an anchor-text level link penalty, possibly due to too many links, or even just a few "untrusted" links with that exact anchor text going into that page.
-
So I'm still struggling to really understand the keyword rankings reports I get from Moz Pro and what actions I can take from those reports. Here's an example:
I am looking at a keyword ranking history for the key phrase "Thailand scams". I have a post about this which appears at #46 in the Google USA SERPs and I'd obviously like to improve that positioning (I now have nearly 20 key phrases in top 50 positions, but few are really valuable - this one potentially is).
So I read the ranking report and it says keyword difficulty is 37% (achievable) and I am on the rise at the moment. How do I capitalise on that? The post that's listing in the SERPs has only 1 linking domain and a Page Authority of 14. My overall site authority is around 27, so I guess I can improve my PA by careful cross-linking from some other pages that have higher PA? And, of course, I can try to get some quality backlinks for this key phrase to this post.
But as I look at those ahead of me in the SERPs for this phrase, they are not necessarily doing those things. So what gets them ahead of me? The listing at #5 has 1 backlink and a PA of 19. The page at #29 has one backlink and a PA of 15. And the page at #40 has one backlink and a PA of 14, just like mine. What makes those pages list ahead of mine in the SERPs?
At least in this instance all the pages ahead of mine are actually about the same topic! Good for you Mr Google, you got one right. But how do I learn from this report?
-
From what I am seeing, John, it seems more likely that a site about cats with high DA can outrank a site about dogs with low DA on the search term "dogs" or "puppies". In this respect, Google seems to suck pretty badly now.
-
It would be good to get more input to this question. I appear to be mostly answering it myself, but none the wiser for doing so.
Another example I noticed in my Moz reports today is "Understanding Thai Baht" where a post I created about currency exchange and carrying/spending money in Thailand is #1 on Google for this phrase. Google keyword analysis says there is no demand and no competition for this phrase, yet it is driving some traffic into my site and the SERPs have almost 50 million results for this phrase. If I use the other half of my page title "managing money in thailand" I disappear from the results, yet it too apparently has no demand and no competition.
It seems at the moment like I can rank very well for any phrase nobody is interested in, but I disappear in the SERPs as soon as there's any level of competition - even from sites that are almost totally unrelated to the query.
-
DA and PA is worked out by SEOMoz, it is not the same as how SE's would do it. Its just a guideline. There are also other factors. a website about dogs with low DA, may outrank a website about cats with high DA for the term puppies.
It may be that one site is seen as more relevant than the other, or do better in some other factor.
-
That's actually a useful clue. I was close to thinking that, but had not quite got there. Using the Moz keyword research tool, I can see that:
-
"bachelor hotels phuket" has a KDS of 22
-
"bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 59, so much more difficult to rank for.
-
"girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 29
-
"girl-friendly hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 58, so again more difficult to rank for.
Unfortunately it seems the search volume scores fetcher is broken at the moment (must be missing a spline) so I can't see whether ranking for these easier keywords is worthwhile or not. It has been from a traffic perspective, anyway.
But that's not the full story, of course. The attached image shows the detailed Moz ranking analysis for "bachelor hotels phuket" and what's really interesting about this is that my page, with a PA of just 13 and a DA of just 27, is out-ranking pages with a PA of 30 and 38 and DA of up to 97. I guess that's Google being democratic in small spaces?
If I spent 50 credits on the "full report" at this point, would I find out much more about the situation? Not sure if it's worth spending the 50 credits here or not.
The second attached image is perhaps even more revealing (or at least intriguing). When "IN" is added to the search phrase, my PA=13, DA=27 page is being out-ranked by four URLs that have a PA=1 and no backlinks, although they do mostly have higher DA. The page ranking above mine, however, has a PA=1 and DA=13, with only 2 backlinks to my 34. How does it rank ahead of me for this phrase???
Sometimes the more I know the less I understand.
-
-
I think you were correct in the first place, there are probably many more pages using the "IN" in their content, so more compeditive
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 List stuck on "Gathering Metrics"
Hello! I set up a keyword list over a week ago and the majority of the keywords still say "Gathering Metrics." Any advice on how to get this data to populate? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
Very different SERP Results
Hi there, I am having some big issues when it comes to getting accurate SERP results for a client http://www.airandice.com.au/ The keyword in question is "air conditioning installation" Moz is giving me a result of 47 Incognito chrome is giving me anywhere between 8-12. Same when I changed it to Australia search as well. Firefox is giving me 8. Incognito is >100 Now my workmate who is next to me, same network and setup and he is seeing Incognito Chrome - 54 Firefox Incognito - 8 And a third computer in the office on a different network is throwing out different results again. This is real confusing as I can't get a clear idea of where this keyword is situated. Results are varying from 8 - >100 Has anyone else seen or had this problem? It is a 1st for me. I know that keywords fluctuate each time they are searched but this is a huge fluctuation.
Keyword Research | | JoelMolloy0 -
How to optimize home page for several keywords
My issue is this. I'm getting a lot of "F" grades for certain keywords to my homepage using MOZ. the thing is I can't add to many keywords to title tag without going over 65 characters. It seems the title tag is most important and even though i have keywords in content and everything else, without title tag keyword its useless. can creating more than one title tag help or will that make things worse with search engines?
Keyword Research | | DrMcCoy0 -
Keywords with and without diacritics
Hi, I am trying to make my site to appear in the search results even the searched term have or have not been wrote with diacritics for example: "șarpe" or "sarpe". The language is Romanian. If I seach for "Românul cu maşină, marea victimă" or "Romanul cu masina, marea victima" the first result for both searches is the same. I don't see anything special on their html code and I am wondering how do they did it. Regards, Bogdan
Keyword Research | | RIAdig0 -
I'm a noob. Keywords for new ecommerce site. Should I go for the "big boys" or start small?
Hey guys, My ecommerce site sells fair trade jewelry, bags, shoes from developing countries. I used the Keyword difficulty tool and came up with a list of about 50 keywords. Should I focus on the 29%-50% difficulty keywords or go for the 50%-75%? Or a mix of both? Thanks so much, Adam My list is attached in a .jpeg VmpJ7iQ
Keyword Research | | Adammcconnell0 -
How do I find traffic for local keywords?
We're having trouble finding reliable traffic numbers for long-tail local keywords (ex. - "computer repair green bay"). We tried using Google Insights but it doesn't display long-tail keyword information, only broad keyword keywords searched for in a certain locale. We also tried using Wordtracker, but that hasn't been too reliable either. Is there a single tool that provides real traffic for local long-tail keywords?
Keyword Research | | optimalwebinc0 -
Please help with SEO keyword research
Hi Moz community, I would like to request your collective wisdom. I'm new to SEO and putting together an SEO research and strategy document for the employment service I work for. Have solid skills in Google Adwords and have ran a campaign over the last two years with excellent results. But this SEO thing is a whole new world! That's why who better to turn to than the leading community for SEO professionals? 🙂 Any support, advice, tips would be most welcomed appreciated. It's an employment service and I've got a list of keywords. For example, here are some of the action words I thought could be useful: <colgroup><col width="215"> <col width="91"> <col width="65"></colgroup> [find staff] 0.79 73 [find employees] 0.97 73 [looking for staff] 0.94 58 [looking for staff] 0.94 58 [staff wanted] 0.62 58 [looking for employees] 0.94 46 [look for work] 0.77 36 [looking for workers] 0.93 36 [find workers] 0.91 36 [employee search] 0.72 28 [staff search] 0.37 28 [find an employee] 0.79 22 [search for employees] 0.71 12 [find a worker] 0.66 12 [how to find employees] 0.71 12 My questions: Where to from here? If this was a Google Adwords campaign I would place the words in, create ad copy and test response. But with SEO, are these words useful? Can you target all of these words with SEO - or am I better finding words with higher volume? How many words should I be looking to target? For example, am I only trying to find the 5 or 10 highest volume words, or is it important to target lots of words with SEO? Is it just one set of keywords per page, or can I target all the above keywords on one page? I'm a bit lost. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Keyword Research | | jasonlewisdiiigy0 -
Keyword Variations?
Hi, can anybody tell me if it is useful to optimize the following keyword in all 3 Versions?
Keyword Research | | mbase22
As I know google separates the 2 words as if using a hyphen - so it would be the same as if just using a space between the words.
But if you search for the different Versions in google there are different SERPS for every of this versions? Not many users will search using a hyphen between the words I guess - butt I saw some few keywords tipped in with hyphen in my google analytics report. And I want to be on top 😉 Piloten Ausbildung Piloten-Ausbildung Pilotenausbildung thx!0