Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Keyword Research (dash or no dash)
-
I have a client that has been optimizing for "print and apply" for the past 5 months. Yesterday they decided it was more grammatically correct to use "print-and-apply."
There question to me was "is this going to effect our SEO?"
So...
I checked the difficulty using the keyword analysis tool, both keywords had the same broad/exact adwords traffic as well as difficulty percentage. When reviewing the top 25 listings for each keyword it looks like the same sites rank in the SERPs between 1-8 and then after that it is completely different.
So, is there a better keyword to target? Are these two keywords different enough to truly have separate search results?
The top 8 results didn't even target "print-and-apply" in there content or title tags...Thanks for the input/discussion - Kyle
-
Agreed, i just found it odd that they currently rank for "print and apply" but not for "print-and-apply" it leads me to believe that if we did target one way or another it could influence rankings. I would be intrigued if anyone else has seen this before.
-
I don't believe the use of hyphens as a keyword target is a helpful strategy. I would reference url's as an explanation to your client saying that search engines realize that hyphens in urls mean spaces. Although, I don't believe that users are using actual hyphens in there search queries enough to merit including these in your strategy. Either way with or without Google is going to broad match these websites as the same, which you have done a good job verifying because when you checked the results for both search queries they were very similar.
"print and apply" would still be the keyword I would target if that's what they are going for.
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
-
Which keywords are sending traffic to my site?
I want to know Which keywords are sending traffic to my site? What type of strategies behind this ?
Keyword Research | | surabhi60 -
Why does this keyword have much greater volume in Bing Keyword Research Tool than Google AdWords Keyword Planner?
I'm using the Google AdWords keyword planner and Bing Webmaster Keyword Research tool. For both, I'm trying to get accurate search volume for the exact term "advertising sales". Over the last thirty days, Bing reports a volume of 5,988. Google's average monthly search volume is 880. Given the market share Google has, I would expect a much higher volume, especially when compared to Bing. Can you offer some ideas of why this might be happening?
Keyword Research | | Kevin_P0 -
The best way to do keyword research in different languages
Could anyone give me a little advice about the best way to do keyword research in different languages? French and Spanish specifically (unsurprisingly). Are there any tools or systems available that will give local language keyword variants on English keywords so that I can have a look at real world searches in local languages - rather than what I take to be the best translation (if that makes any sense). Many thanks, Iain
Keyword Research | | iain0 -
Keywords for fabrication (welding) company??
I've been tasked with finding the keywords for our website. The difficulty I'm finding is receiving help from the fabrication personal to suggest keywords. I'm not sure if its peoples imagination or if there's a general unwillingness. Can anyone make any suggestions here? Is there a fabrication or welding keyword database I can put to them and hopefully get their brains working? Or even a way to see what keywords our competitors use?
Keyword Research | | Resolver1010 -
Bulk keyword competition tool?
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool is great, but the 5 keyword limit is too small. I need a tool that will allow checking the organic competition level of 100's of keywords (to help in selecting blog topics). Anyone know of such a tool?
Keyword Research | | AdamThompson1 -
How do you optimize for compound keywords
What is the best way to handle keywords like "switchplate covers"? The key word may be seen as either a 2 or 3 word phrase, depending how you handle the compound term: "switch plate" or "switchplate" In google KW it shows different results for switch plate vs switchplate as well as using cover vs covers. I've tried using all the variations in my descriptions, titles and H2s but I think this is diluting them all. Can anyone show me best practice guidelenes or examples of good solutions to these kinds of compound key words? Thanks Handcrafter
Keyword Research | | stephenfishman0 -
How can i track keywords history
i need to keep a record for all keywords history , is there any way that we can track keywords history so we can compare each week with the previous weeks ?
Keyword Research | | omarfk0 -
Keyword Traffic Estimator Tools
Hello, I'm relatively new to SEO and looking to find a good tool for estimating the search traffic volume of different keywords in order to focus efforts on higher yielding terms. Right now I'm using Google's traffic estimator but it doesn't seem to have much data for long-tail keywords. Is anything else out there better or more accurate? Thank you!
Keyword Research | | rawberg0