Does targeting more than one keyword or keyword phrase effect rankings?
-
Hi,
We have a homepage where we are targeting three main keywords.
'Cheap books', 'buy books' and 'used books'.
We are ranking well for cheap books and making progress on the more competitive buy and used.
My question is how many keywords can you reasonably rank for on one page.
We are targeting other keywords on other pages and having some success - but is three the maximum or is that too many?
-
Thanks Ryan - just what I needed to know.
-
Three is certainly possible but in my experience not optimal. You want to offer as many pages as you can provide compelling, quality content to support the pages. You should also keep in mind the plural and singular forms of words can provide different search results. I would recommend researching the keywords you wish to focus using Google's Adwords tool.
If you are targeting 3 words, and you have a direct competitor targeting just one keyword, then all things being equal your competitor will win (i.e. rank higher).For example, your keywords should be included in your page title, and each word or phrase you add dilutes your weighting for that keyword.
It really depends on your goals. If your goal is to reach the first page on moderately competitive keywords, you may be able to achieve that result and still focus two keywords. If you wish to rank #1 for a competitive keyword, then you should only focus one keyword. You may be able to include the plural or other slight variations, but that would be it.
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
-
Search Console shows structure keywords more significant over content keywords. What is wrong?
Search Console shows non content related - website structure keywords as:
On-Page Optimization | | Yaz-
"categories, account, facebook,..." as top significant keywords. And after those comes the website's content keywords.
These words come from the header as I can notice. Am I repeating the content keywords less? Is there a way to adjust this? I am sure this affects my Adsense targeting.
What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions?0 -
Dashes "-" in keyword?
Just running over the page/keyword analyzer and Moz picked up the fact that my link and title are not the same as the keyword I am targeting. I am targeting the keyword "Battlefield 4 CD Key" However my title (and therefore link) are Battlefield 4 CD-Key. Note the dash. Does the dashes matter in SEO or should I try to remove them and have continuity through all of the page.
On-Page Optimization | | MrPenguin0 -
Need help ranking my site
Hi, Can anyone help me out? I am trying to get this site ranked for "Villa General Belgrano". It was on the first page of Google and then it disappeared. Did I over optimize the anchor text? http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.lawebdelvalle.com.ar
On-Page Optimization | | Carla_Dawson0 -
To enter keyword meta tags or to not enter keyword meta tags?
I've been doing SEO for awhile, but new to SEOMoz. I'm surprised that SEOMoz does not recommend keyword meta tags. I didn't enter them for the longest time because I know Google doesn't care about them. However, I did read that other search engines DO use them. And therefore that is why you should have them. I teach my customers about SEO, and I know it would be much easier for them not to enter or worry about the keyword meta tags. However, I would love to hear opinions here. And to Bing/Yahoo put any weight into them or is it only really small search engines? Thanks! Hilary
On-Page Optimization | | endlessrange0 -
Lead With Branded Keywords or Descriptive Keywords in Page Title for (Niche) Site?
Our site is hingeheads.com, and our products and product catalog are unique in two ways. For one our product is not something that people are generally aware of, and secondly our entire product catalog consists of different variations of the same product. **Catalog Overview: **http://hingeheads.com/collections/all Product Example: http://hingeheads.com/products/dolphin I keep wondering if it is better to lead the title with "branded keywords" [1] or with "descriptive keywords" [2]? Dolphin HingeHead | Unique Home Decor & Gift Idea | HingeHeads Dolphin Decor Accessories & Unique Gift Ideas | HingeHeads I am currently going with the second solution, but I am always wondering if that's the right/better solution. I am curious to hear feedback from people who have more experience with this than I do. How would you structure the title for our product pages? Thanks! Kai
On-Page Optimization | | hingeheads0 -
Major Ranking Drop
My site bestdslrreview dot net was ranking number one for Canon T3i. I was amazed considering my competition. 🙂 Canon T3i was at number 3 to 5 usually for US traffic.. Canon 7d review was ranking number 2 and Canon 7D was on page one. Canon 7D keywords dropped about 10 places but Canon T3i Review dropped about 50. and same for Canon T3i. I worry about a number of things, including thin affiliate site but I don't know, my articles are original. I also worry about to many links with my keywords in anchor text. My on page results from SEOMOZ look great to me. This drop was my main reasons for going ahead and signing up. Hoping I could find out what happened. The site is only about six months old. I waited probably three months before doing any significant link building. The good thing is, I was ranking high from Black Thursday until a few days before Christmas. It can't be someone else just started doing SEO as I fell far too fall. Some kind of penalty. I had Google do this to another of my sites once though and after a couple of months it bounced back for most of my keywords. A site very much like this one. Is this just the Google Dance? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | RustyF0 -
Images being ranked
I have a client who is concerned about the performance of his images ranking on Google Images. I have taken a look at the obvious things like - alt tags, title tags , file names. I am not sure why he is struggling quite so much to get his images ranked well as the sites he is competing against and who are already ranking are a very poor quality. This is his site - http://www.ukweddingfavours.co.uk Would really appreciate your feedback and I can dish out some good answers.
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Apostrophes in keywords
It appears that SEOmoz tools like the On-Page Report Card treat keywords differently if they have apostrophes in. So for example childrens and children's are treated as different keywords. Is this a quirk of the On-Page Report Card or does Google treat them as separate keywords?
On-Page Optimization | | MulberrySqCraig0