Keyword Research

Why are all my keywords rated "highly competitive"?

I am using the Keyword Analysis tool and it is telling me that almost all the keywords I put in are "highly competitive" even though there is very little competition on Google. Example: I enter the keyword "christian web designers" on Google, United Kingdom It then reports that this keyword is 53% Highly Competitive. However I Google this term in quotes and there is less then 4,000 results. I also enter this keyword into Traffic Travis which tells me the the difficulty is Relatively Easy. Am I doing something wrong here?

| JamesG075

0

Keyword Stuffing?

I'm the copy writer for a marketing firm, who is doing the SEO work for a website that sells wholesale Disney apparel. I was recently asked to rewrite their homepage blurb, as it was all over the place. However, one thing I'm wondering is if you guys felt the various Disney keyword combinations (IE: Disney Beach Towels, Disney Mugs, Disney Travel Mugs, etc) were necessary for SEO purposes? Or, if they would be considered keyword stuffing? I thought they seemed pretty spammy, but I just wanted to run it by you guys and get your thoughts. Both versions are below. Thanks! Current: Welcome to our website. We are so glad that you have found us, and hope that your ordering experience is a positive one. Here you will find all the Licensed Disney apparel you will ever need to fill your store. We offer Disney apparel in all sizes; infant through plus size. Styles include adult, men, women, youth, toddler, boys, girls, infants, sleepwear, fleece, tanks, dresses, short sets, tee shirts, and much more! Are you looking for Disney licensed accessories? Want Disney licensed collectable pins? We have 80+ designs. We also carry Disney beach towels, Disney mugs, Disney travel mugs, Disney tumblers, Disney beach bags, Disney totes bags, and Disney messenger bags, and more. In addition to all of our Disney products, we also offer other high demand licenses such as Marvel, and Nickelodeon. **REVISED:**Welcome to ------- online shop! Our top priority is providing retailers with a wide array of wholesale licensed apparel and accessories from renown brands like Disney, Nickelodeon & Marvel. We carry a vast inventory of products, in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors and styles - so your store can always stay stocked with all the in-demand items kids and adults crave! Whether your customers want Mickey Mouse t-shirts and beach towels for their next vacation, or Tinkerbell travel mugs and tote bags for everyday use, our wholesale Disney selection has you covered. We also carry over 80 designs of Disney’s popular collectible pins and an equally rich selection of licensed Marvel and Nickelodeon goods.

| BrandLabs

0

Penalty for on-page optimizing too many pages?

Hey in the process of building a new site in the fitness niche - targeting keywords such as: <colgroup><col width="387"></colgroup>
| how to get a flat stomach |
| how to get rid of belly fat fast |
| how to get rid of belly fat for women |
| how to get rid of love handles fast |
| how to get skinny |
| how to have more energy |
| how to loose weight fast |
| how to lose love handles |
| how to lose love handles fast |
| how to lose lower belly fat | All these keywords get decent search volume. My question, alot of the content for these keywords would be similar for example - "how to get a flat stomach", "how to lose love handles" and "how to get skinny" would pretty much have similar content. I could build a single page for all these keywords but i loose all the ranking benefits from doing on-page optimization such as creating a page for each of these keywords and optimizing it for each of these keywords (e.g. putting the keyword in the URL and Title) But if i build individual pages, to me it doesn't look natural optimizing multiple pages for the keyword terms, plus i loose the benefits of building a single page (e.g. less costly, not as much outreach activity required, etc) You could argue however that if you create individual pages for each of these keywords you are addressing the query directly as theres a slight difference between "how to lose love handles and how to get a flat stomach. But i guess thats up to google to decide. So how would you approach this? Cheers, Chris

| monster99

0

Best Practices For Keyword Optimization

Hey currently building a new page on a clients site in the weight loss niche. The keywords he wants to rank for are the following: <colgroup><col width="198"> <col width="64"></colgroup>
| [fat burning foods] | 49500 |
| [foods that burn fat] | 22200 |
| [fat burning foods for women] | 2900 |
| [belly fat burning foods] | 2900 |
| [best fat burning foods] | 1900 |
| [fat burning foods for men] | 1900 |
| [list of fat burning foods] | 720 | His site is new, but he has excellent content production capabilities. My question is, in terms of optimizing the page (the title and url) for these keywords would you focus on the highest volume keyword. In this case the highest volume keyword is "fat burning foods" however is the most competitive and dominated by high domain authority sites (50+ vs. clients site which is around 30). Thus its highly unlikely he will rank for that keyword for quite a while. But for the keyword term "best fat burning foods" the competition is alot less in terms of DA and other factors but volume is smaller with 1900 hits a month. So would you optimize the page (the title and url) for "best fat burning food" or would you optimize thinking about the long-term and eventually ranking the keyword "fat burning foods". My thinking would be to optimize the page for "fat burning foods". And that the benefits of optimizing (url and title) for "best fat burning foods" isn't ideal for the long-run. Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. Cheers, Mark

| monster99

0

Keyword Analysis Tool

Can someone please enlighten me on the Keyword Analysis tool Matrix. Does Domain Linking refer to the number of links back to that domain as a whole? Also why is it that a page with a lower page ranking can be way ahead of one with a domain ranking that is way higher or vice-a -versa? What is a good number to go after? what is actually attainable? Thanks

| nooneoconnor

0

What came first the content or the keyword research?

So I've been searching high and low to try and answer this. I just cant seem to get this part down and i know its the most important part. I always run into the issue where i am building a e commerce or some other site and i have it all set up but no content. So i start doing keyword research. In which the market niche that i am working on now is really broad, so its really hard to research. I then end up getting frustrated because the competition for the words are really high. But back on track, i get frustrated and then kaboom! i don't get the results i want and i am back to square one and no content is made or nothing. So my webpage gets nothing. So i took a step back and wondered, should i make all the content first and then the keyword research and then go back and "revise" my website content with all my keywords that i a trying to target? Sounds like a dumb question but i just wanted feedback and input on how people do this and go forth with everything.

| Dante13

0

How can my news website display on first page

Hello, I just would like to know how can my news website display on first page in Google what should i do, the time i use WordPress to run the site. i have more than 20,000 post but i don't get good number of clicks my website is www.edb-news.com thank you

| MajedAtwi

0

Future of SERP tracking

Hi all I guess we all know what happend to Raven, loosing its AdWords API and being forced into removing SERP tracking. If not, see more here: http://raventools.com/blog/scraped-data-serp-tracker/ What is SEOMOZ stand on this? Will you continue to provide SERP tracking? Kind regards Fredrik

| Resultify

0

Changing your primary keyword to target seasonal demands

The industry that my 3-commerce store caters toward has seasonal demands. For example (this is not my industry but the idea applies), let's assume that I have a sporting goods store and that I sell footballs in the fall, but I sell more baseballs in the summer. Would you ever consider changing the primary keyword on the HomePage title and within the body to target different keywords (football vs baseball) during different seasons (fall vs summer)? Or would you just create individual product pages which target the keywords and link back internally to your homepage? Or is there a better way to target seasonal demands where conversions for the entire website vary greatly from season to season. Sorry for all the elementary questions.

| Santaur

0

Google keyword rankings

I show a MON icon (it looks like a calendar page) for all my google rankings. The icon is not clickable. Can anybody tell me what this is? Also, I use to be highly ranked in 100's of keywords in google now barely anything. The domain is several years old and has performed in well in the past. Can't figure out what is going on.

| ecoscott

0

E-Commerce keyword question

We sell ItemA. One of the phrases that brings people to our site is "ItemA for sale". Should I just try to target "ItemA" or should I try to get "for sale" in there? I have seen a few other variations such as "on clearance" or "to purchase" as well. Can I just focus on "ItemA" or do I need all of those variants as well?

| EcommerceSite

0

Influencing which page google chooses as the authority for a certain keyword

I have spent the last year optimizing my site for a specific keyword that I believed would do well with respect to conversions. The good news is that my efforts have somewhat succeed. I am now ranking second for a pretty popular keyword, and this effort has definitely increased my traffic. The bad news is that the target page that shows up for the optimized keywords isn't really the authoritative page on my site for the given keywords. As a result, it is my belief that my bounce rate is increasing and my conversions are decreasing. To be more specific, let's say I have optimized my site for the keywords "cool widgets". On my site, I am referencing "cool widgets" in key areas such as title, meta keywords etc. I am referencing the above both on my homepage as well as the cool-widgets page. So, http://www.mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com both contain pretty heavy optimization for "cool widgets". When a user searches "cool widgets", google is displaying mysite.com - however, i'd like it to display mysite.com/cool-widgets like all my competitors. Is there any advice or light the community can shed on how I might go about correcting this issue? I don't think I want to de-optimize my home page, as I am afraid I might lose that position and not have it replaced with the more relevant target page. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Roy

| royboy

0

Branded vs Generic keywords - is Google treating their rank equaly!?

Several times I have noticed that website receiving sort of a rankings drop penalty for certain wrongly built on-page strategies that involves keyword stuffing, wrong keyword density(too much) etc. The question is - how you guys think - is branded keywords receiving the same treatment from Google then generic ones? And here is why - for one popular brand I see that they ranking for their brand keyword very high(1th) but keyword density is awful - more then 10%. So, my guess is - if this keyword density you would apply for generic keyword you will end up nowhere to be found for it! Is that could be truth? Any experiments info about that? thanks and regards, Jungles

| Jungles

0

Keyword Ranking Issue

For one of my campaigns I have running all the keywords are appearing as having a position > 50, when in fact I know these keywords are appearing on the top 5 pages of Google after a manual search. Can anyone have a solution for this? Thanks

| dancody2

0

Bounce Rate at 45% - How to Improve?

Good Morning... I've been reviewing my G analytics to try and figure out how to convert better, and I see that my site's avg bounce rate is at 45%... What's the best way to improve bounce rate on my site and help convert visitors to customers? Please let me know if you need any additional info about my site to try and help me get to the bottom of this... Thanks a lot!

| Prime85

0

Plural vs singular keyword usage - on-page optimization

The on-page report card appears to include both plural and singular versions of keywords in reporting the keywords within the body, which results in a keyword stuffing warning. My question is, is it truly keyword spamming to use over 15 instances of a keyword that is spread across plural and singular versions of the keyword? If keywords are lumped together this way by Google's algorithms, why do pages rank differently for singular and plural versions of the same keyword?

| nathan_lg

0

Ranking history

I am having trouble on getting a ranking history for some of my keywords. Is this feature still working? thanks

| cardif

1

My Houzz Photo is Beating My Website in the SERPS

We were #3 for a keyword and now we are #4, oddly now Houzz.com is #2 and #3. The #3 slot is our photo on Houzz I optimized for our keyword. Should I dump the photo on Houzz? Since it is beating me on that keyword? The #2 slot is query for my keywords but we don't appear on that page. Thoughts?:) Thanks.

| greenhornet77

0

Should I 'nofollow' the pages on my site I want to rank the highest??

I have a lot of pages on my site & I was wondering if I would be better off tagging the pages that are most important to me nofollow. Any suggestions would be wonderful. Thanks

| Caseman

0

Move-nest

Hi Mozzers, What would be the the disadvantages of using a hyphen in yous domain name? Thanks in advance

| Dan28

0

Weekly on-page SEO report problem

I just got my first on-page SEO report, and only got report on 3 random keywords in my list of keywords. Why don't I get a report on the other keywords? Is there a certain reason for why I get only those specific keywords? Thanks in advance.

| danielpett

0

Measuring ROI pre-campaign

I have a potential client who wants to know what ROI would be on a SEO campaign as opposed to Adwords. Their budget for Adwords is $20.00 per day. So I want to get this down to around $10.00-$15.00 I've had a look through their market in adwords and there seems to enough low/medium results which aren't being targeted by others in the niche for organic search. Obviously I can't guarantee people will click on their links when we get to first page but wondering if there is any sort of standard to make it tangible in the first instance? Any help appreciated.

| StephenForde

0

Changes at Raven Tools!

I received notification today that Raven tools will lose it's Adwords API, see below: "Raven received notice from Google late last week that we would lose access to its AdWords API. Without API access, Raven can't provide Google AdWords research, management and reporting to our customers" This is a massive blow as we use Raven to track progress for clients and also to run keyword research etc. Does anybody that knows Raven have a suitable alternative? Thanks...

| JonathanSmith

0

Best way to find keyword to write a post that will get 50 visitors a day in Google traffic?

Hi - I have a blog with good PR (4) but not much search traffic. I am interested in targeting keywords on a single blog post basis rather than site wide. The current search traffic is so low I can't really base looking for keywords off the keywords people are already arriving from. The only tool I know is the Google keyword tool. I am tired of writing posts that get zero search visitors most days, so would like to try to target some terms that will get around 50 search visits per day to that specific post. Best approach?

| KateV

0

Best way to find what key phrases to optimize my site for.

What is the best tool to find out what key phrases to optimize my site for? I have been using Google's Adwords keyword suggestion tool for a long time but thought there might be something better out there. Thanks mozzers! Ron

| Ron10

0

I am a paid subscriber to seomoz. Why am I getting any information from the keyword analysis tool?

I am not getting any data when I use the keyword analysis tool

| alexsaund

0

Specific Keyword Ranking Advice

Hi Folks, We're trying to optimize the page (http://alabu.com/goat-milk-soap/) for the keyword "goat milk soap". Our page used to rank #1 before Panda (actually our home page did, not the page I'm trying to optimize on now). Now we're around rank 25. I've followed all the guidelines for on-page optimization I know, and I've done everything I can think of. We're currently executing a link building campaign but that obviously takes time. Does anyone have any advice? Is there anything else I can do to improve our ranking? Thanks, Hal

| AlabuSkinCare

0

How do I determine international search volume for a search term, beyond google?

I am trying to determine which countries I should be entering into next with my product based on search volume and competition. The issue is that not every country has google as their primary engine, ie. China. How would I go about figuring out volume / competition globally across all engines?

| jaychristopher

0

Are on-page optimization tools becoming outdated?

So from what I've noticed, Google is using a lot of semantics in their algorithm. When it comes to using a tool to determine on-page, keyword/phrase factors, most on-page optimization tools check exact matches and give you a rating and suggestion based on that. What about synonyms and "natural", related terms? My question is, are these tools becoming more inaccurate by not using semantic/synonym checks?

| Talooma

0

How can a keyword has very low search volume (<10) and high competition?

Sometimes I notice in Google keyword tool that a keyword has very low search volume (<10) and high competition? Why would anyone go for a keyword with very less search volume ?? (note: If Checked in Google keywords tool with Exact match) Though I understand this tool doesn't always have exact data but still any explanation to that question?

| Personnel_Concept

0

Targeting Local Phrase vs National Phrase

Hi i was wondering options since it would be hard to compete/budget with large insurance companies such as Met Life and State Farm We are looking to rank for Life Insurance Policy which according to Adword is it searched 74,00 Monthly So was thinking Life Insurance Policy New Orleans which i think i can rank for but according to adwords it searched - times. So dont think we would get any new business. What would best option to try and get new life insurance policy customers

| break_thru_pro

0

Alt. Tags

How many alt tags should you aim for per page, or Images? Anytime I complete a page I run it through SEOmoZ Page analysis, and usually shoot for an "A", I also look at our competitors to see how many alt tags they are using, and they always have 2-3 per page with keyword inserted. For example If I was aiming for EX. NFL tickets how could I incorp. this into more than 1 image having the keywords on the page without stuffing. Our editor give us the option to put Image Description & Title. Thx

| TP_Marketing

0

What now?

Hey. Hope you can help me here .. I have a keyword that is not "top 10 in google" but the keyword is a keyword Difficulty of 22%. Can you give me some advice on how to get top 10 on the keywords that have keyword Difficulty 22%?

| Agger

0

Any from Denmark some can help me?

Hallo. IIs there one from Denmark of which can help me?

| Agger

0

Best way to find Long Tail Keywords?

Hello, I'm looking for some help trying to discover some long tail keywords i can use. Is there a site or a program out there that lets you type in a keyword and then shows you the long tail versions that are actually searched? (anything other than google keyword tool). Thanks,

| Prime85

0

SEO for small, independent insurance agencies -- is it possible?

I work with a lot of small, independent insurance agencies and have found through keyword research that most people search for insurance by state (e.g. pennsylvania auto insurance) or simple by product (e.g. auto insurance). Only if an agency is located in a densely populated city like San Francisco do I see people searching for insurance by city. As you can probably guess, these keywords are extremely competitive. Big companies like Geico and Progressive tend to take over page one for these searches. So, if I'm trying to optimize a website for an insurance agency in Quakertown, PA, for example, a small town with very few monthly searches (zero according to Google's keyword tool), how should I focus my on-page SEO efforts? Should I focus on "state + insurance," "city + insurance," or a combination of both? Or am I approaching this all wrong? Thank you in advance for your help. I'm feeling really stumped and would appreciate any fresh perspective.

| copyjack

0

Cant Remember a Website - Do You Know It?

Several months ago, I ran across a website that helped determine what subjects/topics to write about for our blog based on the keywords we wanted to go after. It did a search of keywords along with possible blog topics. But now I cant remember what tool would offer such suggestions on keywords, blog topics, etc. Do you know of any?

| bigeyecreative

0

Where can I find data on growth in individual keyword search terms, over tiime?

I am operating in an emerging market, and want to understand the underlying growth in the relevant Google keyword search terms. I can use this as a proxy for market growth. I have checked out Google Trends, but this confusingly shows peak search volumes (out of 100) not search volumes. Are there any better tools out there? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

| JDog98

0

Analysing more than 5 keywords?

I have the habit of analysing 80 to 100 keywords per topic and I really do not see myself exporting 20 5-lines Excel sheets and then merging them before getting to analysis itself. Is there a way around this (very strict) limitation?

| ResourceLab

0

How do I do SEO for a client who is starting a website that is in a niche with very little to none search traffic?

I am helping a client do On-page optimization and link building. His website is rather like thoughtcatalog.com, where it is a collection of random articles, opinions and anecdotes with no fixed genre. He also has a section devoted to artsy pictures of women. To make things worse, I am in a country (singapore) where the population is small, and the search traffic for his kind of content is minuscule. I have trouble finding out good keywords for him to target and I am considering not undergoing any serious keyword targeting at all (because it will detract from the style of his content). I did a little competitor research, and most of the websites in such a genre do not seem to do any keyword targeting at all! In such a case, how do i continue to help him with SEO? should I abandon keyword research? What should i do to help him earn traffic?

| Marcus_Wong

0

Keywords and On-Page Optimization

Hi i have quite a few keywords i want to rank for which are: how to lose 10 pounds fast how to lose 100 pounds how to lose ten pounds how to lose 30 pounds I can either make separate pages for each of these keywords, but i would prefer to create a single page since most of the content would be very similar, plus i don't think Google would like the fact i'm 'targeting' these keywords individually. Anyway if i do decided to create a single page for all these keywords, what advice do you have? For the URL i'm going to have the keyword 'how to lose weight' or 'how to lose pounds', something generic. Then i'm going to have content which pretty much answers each search query. Now i guess the negative is the fact, i can't optimize the page for each keyword (e.g. keyword in URL, title, or on the actual page itself) So my question how would you approach this issue? How do i tell google (besides backlinking, i will be including these keywords in anchor text) my page is about how to lose 30 pounds or how to lose 100 pounds, when i'm not doing anyway on-page optimization for the keywords individually. Regards, Chris

| monster99

0

Is there a minimum amount of words you need?

I am making some pages on my website very short. Some contain only about 20-30 words in the body. I will have about 50 of these pages. It is not because I want to spam but I think it is more user friendly. Will this hurt the overall site's SEO? I dont care that much about SEO for each individual page, but obviously id care a lot if these small content pages hurt my website in general? Thanks!

| waltergah

0

Phone numbers in the meta titles

Is it best practice to have phone numbers in the meta titles? Will google penalize for that? It is actually useful for the users...

| CMTM

0

How can I do to improve ranking for head keywords?

Hi guys, I'm currently working for an italian restautant finder web site http://www.cibando.com The site currently do not rank for any of the cityName pages eventhough all this pages received a B grade in the on-page report card by Seo Moz and have a great amount of internal links. This is an example of the pages I'm speaking about: http://www.cibando.com/ita/ristoranti/milano/milano As I can changeso little on this page, I'm thinking about creatinng a new cityName page having this URL http://www.cibando.com/ita/ristoranti-milano in which I add some text about the city and the restaurants people can have dinner at and add some link to the currently cityName page and categoryCuisine page. Is it a good idea? Do oyu have any suggestions? Any expert out there give an insight? Thanks in advance. Francesca

| Francy

0

Is there a better keyword tool than google's adwords keyword tool?

I have heard a lot of people say not to trust the results of google adword's keyword tool. Is there a better tool out there that i am not aware of that can judge local monthly and global monthly search volume?

| adriandg

1

Using a country in your keywords

My company has recently started offering services in South Africa - which is great - same language - lot of potential there. But I suspect our keyword research is suffering from "thinking like a foreigner". i.e. "buy cars South Africa" rather than "buy cars". Wouldn't google.co.za naturally assume: 1) Anyone using their service for "buy cars" is looking for "buy cars South Africa" (I know it's more complicated - Google will give different results the more it can figure out about your location) 2) That any co.za site optimised for "buy cars" is automatically 90% optimised for "buy cars South Africa" too - so isn't a productive long tail query (against something like “buy sports cars”) I appreciate that some companies will be TARGETING foreign browsers (i.e. holiday accommodation South Africa) so will need to explicitly optimise their on-site for the country for “foreign search engines”. But I'm asking about companies in South Africa targeting people from South Africa.

| Ali31

0

Analysing my Keyword Transaction from Analytics, HELP for Selecting for Content

| BigBlaze205

0

How to stay organized for keyword research?

As most of you know keyword research can be quite taxing. I have been trying to get organized and do extensive keyword research. But trying to stay organized is proving to be more and more difficult. Can I get some expert views from experts in the community as to how you all go about organizing your research and how you track things over time. Thanks

| EricMoore

0

Best site/tool to get exact rank of a site

Is there a site/tool that will give me the exact google rank of a site for a specific keyword?

| JML1179

0

Acne related keywords in Google.fr

Hello everyone, I am setting up a website with domainname.fr to rank in google.fr with Acne related keywords. Can anyone give me Competitive keywords which can bring more than 10K visitors per month?? Help will be very much appreciated. P.S: Actually, my uncle is having an offline acne product shop in France. He asked me to setup a website in Google.fr so that he can make some money.

| artemmin

0

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