Keyword Significance
-
I am seeing some very interesting changes in our non-branded keywords, and am curious to know how keyword significance in Google Webmaster Tools plays into ranking of a site. Say for example we are a photography website selling photography supplies. At one point our most significant word was Canon, but now it is photography. Would that mean that we would start seeing a lot of non-branded keywords generating from Google like "camera strap", "camera lens hood", etc. This is really good for us, but curious to know if the only reason we are seeing this is the shift in our keyword significance. Any insight? Thanks!
-
Thanks Dan. Actually, it is exactly what our site is about, and we are getting ranked for all kinds of non-branded keywords. Happy days! I didn't think of the indexing possibility and tipping the scale. I'd be interested to hear what else people say. Thanks again!
-
Hi
Maybe someone can confirm this, but I believe this is google looking at the content on your site, and telling you according to your content, what keywords are most significant. And I believe this is measured by the number of times each word occurs, site-wide (if you click on each word in the list, it will give you the number of occurrences and the pages). SO, one of two things could have happened in your case:
1. Your content changed significantly enough, that the number of occurrences of each word changed, thus shifting around the order.
2. Google indexed new pages that were previously not indexed, which tipped the scales enough in one direction or another, and this changed word occurrence as far as what Google was aware of.
As far as rankings, I don't think its as simple as "higher occurrence=higher ranking" - there are a lot of other factors that come into play with ranking.
So I would take this list as Google telling you "this is what we think you're saying your site is about". If you're getting words in the top of the list that make you say "well, that's not really what my site is about", you may want to consider doing something to fix that.
-Dan
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
-
Google Adwords - Keyword Avg Cost Per Click
Hi Is there away to get the history of the Avg cost per click for a keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Keyword stuffing on category pages - eCommerce site
Hi there fellow Mozzers. I work for a wine company, and I have a theory that some of our category pages are not ranking as well as they could, due to keyword stuffing. The best example is our Champagne category page, which we are trying to rank for the keyword Champagne, currently rank 6ish. However, when I load the page into Moz, it tells me that I might be stuffing, which I am not, BUT my products might be giving both Moz and Google this impression as well. Our product names for any given Champagne is "Champagne - {name}" and the producer is "Champagne {producer name}. Now, on the category pages we have a list of Champagnes, actually 44 Which means that with the way we display them, with both name of the wine, the name of the producer AND the district. That means we have 132 mentions of the word "Champagne" + the content text that I have written. I am wondering, how good is Google at identifying that this is in fact not stuffing, but rather functionality that makes for this high density of the keyword? Is there anything I can do? I mean, we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer a bit, not a lot - but it's a question of balance and I would like to hear if anyone has encountered a similar problem, if it is in fact a problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nikolaj-Landrock2 -
Advanced SEO - What would you do after you run out of keywords?
Hello! Our company has been growing in terms of traffic and ranking well for a couple of years but we are now kind of stagnating because we just don't know what to do next. We have a good blog - and with our blogs, we have been targeting all major keywords with their related keywords as a bucket. - "keyword theme / page" for a long time. But it seems we now don't have any major keyword theme to write about. What is worse is that we don't see any traffic growth since 2014 September. (although we added many good blogs) So what would do you when you run out of keywords? or keyword themes? Would you just keep pumping in more blogs and hope that you get more clicks? or at some point, you just don't care about keywords and write whatever relevant to your site? Wouldn't it hurt our site if we create similar keyword themed pages? (like regurgitating our keywords?) or even same keyword targeting pages? You must have similar experience if you are an owner of a niche site. Can you please share your experience with this kind of headaches? Thank you and look forward to your comments.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joony3 -
Keywords going to Subdomain instead of targeted page(general landing page)
Why are some of my keywords going to subdomains instead of the more general/targeted landing page. For example, on my ecommerce website, the keyword 'tempurpedic' is directing to the subdomain URL of a specific tempurpedic product page instead of the general landing page. The product has a page authority of 15 and the Tempurpedic landing pages with all the products has an authority of 31. I have also noticed that my 'furniture stores in houston' keyword directs to my "occasional tables" URL! instead of a the much more targeted homepage. Is there something I am missing here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nat88han0 -
Going after multiple similar keywords, which is the better approach?
Let's say I have a page targeting a keyword, "New York Restaurants". There are also several "very close" variations of this keyword which I could also target. Here are the volume estimates: New York Restaurants - 100
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich
Restaurants New York - 40
Best Restaurants New York - 30
Best Restaurants in New York - 20
etc. Given this, which of the following is the better overall approach? A) Have one page and work all of these keywords so the page targets all of them. For example here try to weave in "Best" in different ways. B) Have multiple pages and use 301 redirects. Create one page only targeted at "New York Restaurants" and then create additional pages with the other terms in the URL and Headline, which 301 redirect to my "New York Restaurants" page. This is similar to how wikipedia does redirects, for example "Bourne 2" 301 redirects to "Bourne Supremacy". Thanks! | New York Restaurants | 12,100 | Medium | $0.93 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| Restaurants New York | 2,900 | Medium | $1.00 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| Best Restaurants in New York | 3,600 | Low | $0.69 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| Best New York Restaurants | 2,400 | Low | $0.80 | 0% | ACCOUNT |
| New York's Best Restaurants | 260 | Low | $0.76 | 0% |0 -
Google Is Indexing The Wrong Page For My Keyword
For a long time (almost 3 mounth) google indexing the wrong page for my main keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
The problem is that each time google indexed another page each time for a period of 4-7 days, Sometimes i see the home page, sometimes a category page and sometimes a product page.
It seems though Google has not yet decided what his favorite / better page for this keyword. This is the pages google index: (In most cases you can find the site on the second or third page) Main Page: http://bit.ly/19fOqDh Category Page: http://bit.ly/1ebpiRn Another Category: http://bit.ly/K3MZl4 Product Page: http://bit.ly/1c73B1s All links I get to the website are natural links, therefore in most cases the anchor we got is the website name. In addition I have many links I get from bloggers that asked to do a review on one of my products, I'm very careful about that and so I'm always checking the blogger and their website only if it is something good, I allowed it. also i never ask for a link back (must of the time i receive without asking), and as I said, most of their links are anchor with my website name. Here some example of links that i received from bloggers: http://bit.ly/1hF0pQb http://bit.ly/1a8ogT1 http://bit.ly/1bqqRr8 http://bit.ly/1c5QeC7 http://bit.ly/1gXgzXJ Please Can I get a recommendation what should you do?
Should I try to change the anchor of the link?
Do I need to not allow bloggers to make a review on my products? I'd love to hear what you recommend,
Thanks for the help0 -
Significant drop in web rankings
We have two websites and last week we had a significant drop in search engine rankings. Some of these search rankings we have been top 3 for the past 5 years and now we are not in the top 20. Last weekend we changed our hosting provider and IP addresses for the first time in over 7 years. Now is there a way we could work out if we have been hit by the latest Penguin update or if the change in hosting / IP has caused these drop in rankings? I would appreciate any thought or ideas at all.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacksons_Fencing0 -
Competitve keyword ranks on mobile but not on laptop
When i search for a very competitve keyword on a smart phone , my site ranks #6 but on laptop or desktop ranks #24. I do not have a mobile verison of my site just to clarify it. I have cleared the cache on my mobile and laptop. still the same. What is the reason for this?, I d appreciate an insight on this thanks. Nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | orion680