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.
How many keywords should I optimize a page for?
-
Hi,
There is a lot of debate going on on whether to use a single keyword per page or multiple keywords per page.
What I know for sure is that it is not advisable to repeat the same exact keyword in different pages.
I need to optimize product pages, categories and pages for an online store and still do not know if it is better to:
1-work with one main keyword per page plus latent semantic keywords,
2-to optimize a page for multiple different keywords (2 to 4 keywords) which are strongly related to the main topic or to the product sold in a particular product page
3- use single keyword for each page (and no more than one keyword per page). Some seo gurus argue this is the best way to get higher ranking for that particular page in the serps.
My personal opinion would be 1 or 2, but I would like to hear what you suggest and think about it.
Any suggestion or opinion is welcome and appreciated.
Thanks in advance
-
How many products and categories do they have? And will these change by season, year, etc.? Will the number of products grow fast or do you see them staying stable for the near future (18 months to 2 years).
The reason I ask is that planning for future growth -- or no growth -- can help you determine the best solution.
-- Jewel
-
Hi agree there is no right answer - but we need a starting point, and the below works very well for us.
We target 1 keyword per page, however, expand on same for context to the main keyword. So let's say someone makes a blog on "I can't sleep". We would target "cant sleep" - as the head term as in Australia that has circa 1900 searches a month. "Ï cant sleep" is 590 per month. So in this instance, we would recommend the URL for the content www.website.com.au/cant-sleep
The Title
Cant Sleep | Why Cant I Sleep | Forty Winks
H1
I Cant sleep
H2 (Not overly necessary, but if we can squeeze it in)
What do to when you cant sleep
This is a rare term where the grammar is not ideal. But that is what we would recommend consistent with customer queries. One keyword per page gives you a starting point, then as the page is crawled by google webmaster lets you do a deeper dive into what it perceives the page should rank for.
Adjust accordingly and deliver what the customer wants.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi there,
The bad news is that there's no "right" answer to this question. Search engines only reveal so much about what goes into their ranking algorithms, so it's hard to say what strategy is the best one.
One thing that's for sure, though, is that you want to avoid Google viewing your keyword optimization as keyword stuffing. I would strongly advise against the second option you mentioned (optimizing for several different keywords), because that would mean you'd mention three or four different keywords multiple times, which Google might view as keyword stuffing and/or providing a poor user experience. Both of these things could result in lower rankings.
The safe, and generally effective, bet is to choose one primary keyword that's as specific and relevant to your page as possible while still averaging a decent monthly search volume, and back it up with a secondary keyword that's also extremely relevant but isn't your primary keyword because it doesn't have as high a search volume. That way, you'll draw relevant search traffic to your page without it feeling spammy.
Hope that helps. Happy optimizing!
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
-
Page Optimization Error
Hi, I am trying to track a page optimization feature for one of my project, https://shinaweb.com but i keep getting this below error: "PAGE OPTIMIZATION ERROR
On-Page Optimization | | shinawebnavid
There was a problem loading this page. Please make sure the page is loading properly and that our user-agent, rogerbot, is not blocked from accessing this page." I checked robots.txt file, it all looks fine. Not sure what is the problem? Is it a problem with Moz or the website?0 -
Does anyone know of a tool where you can get all of the keyword that any given landing page is ranking for?
I'd like to find out what landing pages are ranking for which keywords, but I haven't been able to find a tool that does it. I was hoping there would be something where I could submit the url and get a list of every keyword it is ranking for. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Powerblanket0 -
Will it upset Google if I aggregate product page reviews up into a product category page?
We have reviews on our product pages and we are considering averaging those reviews out and putting them on specific category pages in order for the average product ratings to be displayed in search results. Each averaged category review would be only for the products within it's category, and all reviews are from users of the site, no 3rd party reviews. For example, averaging the reviews from all of our boxes products pages, and listing that average review on the boxes category page. My question is, will this be doing anything wrong in the eyes of Google, and if so how so? -Derick
On-Page Optimization | | Deluxe0 -
Should I optimize my home-page or a sub-page for my most important keyword
Quick question: When choosing the most important keyword set that I would like to rank for, would I be better off optimizing my homepage, or a sub page for this keyword. My thinking goes as follows: The homepage (IE www.mysite.com) naturally has more backlinks and thus a better Google Page Rank. However, there are certain things I could do to a subpage (IE www.mysite.com/green-widgets-los-angeles ) that I wouldn't want to do to the homepage, which might be more "optimal" overall. Option C, I suppose, would be to optimize both the homepage, and a single sub-page, which is seeming like a pretty good solution, but I have been told that having multiple pages optimized for the same keywords might "confuse" search engines. Would love any insight on this!
On-Page Optimization | | Jacob_A2 -
Can I use Same Keyword for Multi pages Title Tags?
Hello All, I am working on client website and currently they are targeting One Keywords for multi pages. As I have search with Allintitle: Search query and Google display around 37 pages of website which carry same keyword in "Title Tags". I have told to client to change the "Title Tags" but they want that keyword for all relevant pages. So I want to know is that harm in Search Engine Ranking? Note: They have not done the link building activities for multi pages with same Keyword, they are using only in "Title Tags" only
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
Target keywords on homepage or sub page?
Is it better to target main keywords on a site's homepage, or in a sub page. I would usually assume the homepage, but if the domain for the homepage doesn't include the keyword is it better to have a sub page with an exact match URL? For example we target the keyword "abc123" Is it better to optimise the homepage: brandname.com Or create a page to target it: brandname.com/abc123/ And leave the homepage to target brand keywords, but link to the "abc123" page. Whats the best option?
On-Page Optimization | | timscullin0 -
Ecommerce - how many clicks from the home page should categories be
My client has about 300 products in 20 categories with a lot of overlap. How many clicks from the home page should we keep the products? We're not doing pagination. I'd been told several years ago that all products should be 2 clicks or less from the home page. Is this true today? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW1 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0