If you rank first organically for a keyword, will you rank first for variations?
-
Hi everyone,
Hoping that someone will be able to answer this question for us.
If we rank first organically for a keyword, are we safe to assume that we'll rank first (or close to it) for variations of that keyword as well?
E.g. If we rank first easily for "Hamilton Island", can we safely assume that we will rank well organically for close variations of that keyword such as "Hamilton Islands", "Hamiltonisland", "Hamilton Island Hotel" due to the fact that "Hamilton Island" is in those keywords?
We're deciding which keywords to monitor in SEOmoz and we don't want to waste keywords on very similar terms if we don't have to.
Really appreciate any responses!
Cheers.
-
Cheers Jeff!
-
Thanks for the response EGOL.
-
I agree with EGOL and would add that some very subtle variations often have different rankings. For example, I've seen different results when comparing "Rhode Island Wedding" and "Rhode Island Weddings" in the search results. These variations are arguably closer than the ones you are posing yet are different, so don't assume anything.
If you don't want to waste keywords that you monitor, I would recommend tracking the variations that have the highest search volume first. After a quick search, "Hamilton Island" has much more monthly searches than "Hamilton Islands." It might not even be worth it to track the latter term since the search volume is much lower.
-
...can we safely assume that we will rank well organically for close variations of that keyword such as "Hamilton Islands", "Hamiltonisland", "Hamilton Island Hotel" due to the fact that "Hamilton Island" is in those keywords?
That is not a safe assumption.. in fact, since "Hamilton Island Hotel" is a commercial query it could have more competition than "Hamilton Island".
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
-
Suddenly ranking dropped in US: What actions required to retain?
Hi Moz community, Our website has global audience, visitors and clients. Suddenly our website dropped in rankings for main keyword in US; which is our primary targeting country. Not sure why? This is been happening for last 2 months, we waited it to recover and now trying to fix if we can do anything about it. Is there anything wrong with back-links? What might be the factors contributing here for global website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Sudden Drop in Organic Traffic through Image Search
We've have been facing a strange issue with our Organic Image Search Traffic since July month, 10th July 2016 to be precise. There is a significant decline in our Organic Image Search Traffic that we can see in our Google Search Console Account, We have noticed a sudden drop (Almost 80%-90%) in our daily clicks through image search in Google Search Console, Does anyone here have any idea why this has happened suddenly though everything is same as it was before and we haven't done any changes in image names and images path. IWPbQ
Algorithm Updates | | tigersohelll0 -
Need Advice - Google Still Not Ranking
Hi Team - I really need some expert level advice on an issue I'm seeing with our site in Google. Here's the current status. We launched our website and app on the last week of November in 2014 (soft launch): http://goo.gl/Wnrqrq When we launched we were not showing up for any targeted keywords, long tailed included, even the title of our site in quotes. We ranked for our name only, and even that wasn't #1. Over time we were able to build up some rankings, although they were very low (120 - 140). Yesterday, we're back to not ranking for any keywords. Here's the history: While developing our app, and before I took over the site, the developer used a thin affiliate site to gather data and run a beta app over the course of 1 - 2 years. Upon taking on the site and moving to launch the new website/app I discovered what had been run under the domain. Since than the old site has been completely removed and rebuild, with all associated urls (.uk, .net, etc...) and subdomains shutdown. I've allowed all the old spammy pages (thousands of them to 404). We've disavowed the old domains (.net, .uk that were sending a ton of links to this), along with some links that seemed a little spammy that were pointing to our domain. There are no manual actions or messaged in Google Webmaster Tools. The new website uses (SSL) https for the entire site, it scores a 98 / 100 for a mobile usability (we beat our competitors on Google's PageSpeed Tool), it has been moved to a business level hosting service, 301's are correctly setup, added terms and conditions, have all our social profiles linked, linked WMT/Analytics/YouTube, started some Adwords, use rel="canonical", all the SEO 101 stuff ++. When I run the page through the moz tool for a specific keyword we score an A. When I did a crawl test everything came back looking good. We also pass using other tools. Google WMT, shows no html issues. We rank well on Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. However, for some reason Google will not rank the site, and since there is no manual action I have no course of action to submit a reconsideration request. From an advanced stance, should we bail on this domain, and move to the .co domain (that we own, but hasn't been used before)? If we 301 this domain over, since all our marketing is pointed to .com will this issue follow us? I see a lot of conflicting information on algorithmic issues following domains. Some say they do, some say they don't, some say they do since a lot of times people don't fix the issue. However, this is a brand new site, and we're following all of Google's rules. I suspect there is an algorithmic penalty (action) against the domain because of the old thin affiliate site that was used for the beta and data gathering app. Are we stuck till Google does an update? What's the deal with moving us up, than removing again? Thoughts, suggestions??? I purposely, did a short url to leave out the company name, please respect that, since I don't want our issues to popup on a web search. 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | get4it0 -
Ranking Software
Hello Can anyone recommend the best rankings/tracking software - something that will track upto position 500 in the serps. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | webguru20140 -
Number of Items As a Google Ranking Factor??
If I search for "hiking boots" and scan down the SERPs I see the following... Google reports "483 items" for the Zappos.com page. Google reports "Results 1 - 36 of 85" for the Shoebuy.com page (and that does not appear in their code). So, Google is obviously paying attention to the depth of your information or the number of items that you are showing. If they think that is important enough to count and report in the SERPs, might they also be using that information as a ranking factor?? PRACTICAL APPLICATION FOR SEO: If google is using this information, perhaps people should list all of their color, size, etc variants on a single page. For example if you sell widgets in five colors, instead of making one page for each color, list all five on the same page.
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL1 -
Keyword rich domains
Can you share your experience about Keyword rich domains; do they still hold same value as before?
Algorithm Updates | | ShashankGupta0 -
After optimising for SEO my ranking went down...
Hello, My website was ranking for over 100 keywords but was not really optimised properly. For example, the page title was much too long, it was segmented like this: "keyword - Category - domain " I followed recommandations in SEOMOZ and I removed the domain and category from the long page titles to only leave the keyword and updated the H1 to reflect also the keyword. We dropped in ranking since even though we did not change anything, only made things more SEO optimised. I don't understand how it made us drop in ranking?? David
Algorithm Updates | | DavidSpivac0 -
Rankings drop, but only one term
Has anyone experienced a significant drop on just one term? I have about 10 terms that I am constantly monitoring and 9 out of 10 are unchanged or even improved, but 1 term was #1 and is now #11. Curious if anyone has experienced anything similar. I originally thought it was "Panda", but why wouldn't all my terms be affected??
Algorithm Updates | | MNKid150