[Estimated read time: 6 minutes]
A quantitative analysis of the claim that topics are more important than keywords.
What’s more important: topics or keywords? This has been a major discussion point in SEO recently, nowhere more so than here on the Moz blog. Rand has given two Whiteboard Fridays in the last two months, and Moz’s new Related Topics feature in Moz Pro aims to help you to optimize your site for topics as well as keywords.
The idea under discussion is that, since the Hummingbird algorithm update in 2013, Google is getting really good at understanding natural language. So much so, in fact, that it's now able to identify similar terms, making it less important to worry about minor changes in the wording of your content in order to target specific keyword phrases. People are arguing that it’s more important to think about the concepts that Google will interpret, regardless of word choice.
While I agree that this is the direction that we're heading, I wanted to see how true this is now, in the present. So I designed an experiment.
The experiment
The question I wanted to answer was: “Do searches within the same topic (but with different keyword phrases) give the same result?” To this end, I put together 10 groups of 10 keywords each, with each group’s keywords signifying (as closely as possible) the same concept. These keywords were selected in order to represent a range of search volume, and across the spectrum of informational to transactional. For example, one group of keywords are all synonymous the phrase "cheapest flight times" (not-so-subtly lifted from Rand’s Whiteboard Friday):
- cheapest flight times
- cheapest time for flights
- cheapest times to fly
- cheap times for flights
- cheap times to fly
- fly at cheap times
- time of cheapest flights
- what time of day are flights cheapest
- what time of day to fly cheaply
- when are flights cheapest
I put the sample of 100 keywords through a rank-tracking tool, and extracted the top ten organic results for each keyword.
Then, for each keyword group, I measured two things.
- The similarity of each topic’s SERPs, by position.
- For example, if every keyword within a group has the same page ranking no. 2, that result will score 10. If 9 results are the same and one is different, nine results will get a score of 9, and the other will score 1.
- This score is then averaged across all 100 (10 results * 10 keywords) results within each topic. The highest possible score (every SERP identical) is 10, the lowest possible (every result different) is 1.
- The similarity of each topic’s SERPs, by all pages that rank (irrespective of position).
- As above, but scoring each keyword’s results by the number of other keywords that contain that result anywhere in the top 10 results. If a result appears in the top 10 for all keywords in a topic group, it scores a 10, even if the results in the other keywords’ SERPs are in different positions.
- Again, the score is averaged across all results in each topic, with 10 being the highest possible and 1 the lowest.
Results
The full analysis and results can be seen in this Google Sheet.
This chart shows the results of the experiment for the 10 topic groups. The blue bars represent the by position score, averaged across each topic group, and the red bars show the average all pages score.
The most striking thing about this is the wide range of results that can be seen. Topic group D’s keywords are 100% identical if you don’t take ordering into account, whereas group J only has 38% crossover of results between keywords.
We can see from this that targeting individual keywords is definitely not a thing of the past. For most of the topic groups, the pages that rank in the top 10 have little consistency across different wordings of the same concepts. From this we can assume that the primary thing making one page rank where another does not, is matching exact keywords.
Why is there such variation?
If we look into what factors might be affecting the varying similarities between the different topic groups, we could consider the following factors:
- Searcher intent: Informational (Know) vs Transactional (Do) topics.
- Topics with high competition levels.
Searcher intent
Although Google’s categorisation of searches into do, know and go can be seen as a false trichotomy, it can still be useful as a simplistic model to classify searcher intent. All of the keyword groups I used can be classed as either informational or transactional.
If we break up our topic groups in this way, we can see the following:
As you can see, there's no clear difference between the two types. In fact the highest and lowest groups (D and J) are both transactional.
This means that we can’t say — based on this data, at least — that there’s any link between the search intent of a topic and whether you should focus on topics over keywords.
Keyword Difficulty
Another factor that could be correlated with similarity of SERPs is keyword difficulty. As measured by Moz’s keyword difficulty tool, this is a proxy for how strong the sites that rank in a SERP are, based on their Page Authority and Domain Authority.
My hypothesis here is that, for searches where there are a lot of well-established, high-DA sites ranking, there will be less variation between similar keywords. If this is the case, we would expect to see a positive correlation in the data.
This is not borne out by the data. The higher the keyword difficulty is across the keywords in a topic group, the less similarity there is between SERPs within that topic group. This correlation is fairly weak (R2=0.28), so we can’t draw any conclusions from this data.
One other factor that could explain the lack of pattern in this result is that 100 keywords in 10 groups is a fairly small sample size, and is subject to variation in the selection of keywords to go into each group. It is impossible to perfectly control how "close" in definition the keywords in each group are.
Also, it may just be the case that Google simply understands some concepts better than others. This would mean it can see some synonyms as being very closely related, whereas for others it's still perplexed by the variations, so looks for specific words within the content of each page.
Conclusion
So does this mean that we should or shouldn't ignore Rand when he tells us to forget about keywords and focus on topics? Somewhat unsatisfyingly, the answer is a strong "maybe."
While for some search topics there's a lot of variation based on the exact wording of the keywords, for others we can see that Google understands what users mean when they search and sees variations as equivalent. The key takeaway from this? Both keywords and topics are important.
You should still do keyword research. Keyword research is always going to be essential. But you should also consider the bigger picture, and as more tools that allow you to use natural language processing become available, take advantage of that to understand the overall topics you should write about, too.
It may be a useful exercise to carry out this type of analysis within your own vertical, and see how well Google can tell apart the similar keywords you want to target. You can then use this to inform how exact your targeting should be.
Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions, in the comments.
Love experiments like this Sam! Thank you so much for putting this together and for sharing here on Moz.
That said, I want to be really clear that I AM NOT advising anyone to ignore keywords. In fact, my advice is just the opposite - keyword usage still matters a lot, and if you're doing SEO, you should employ keywords intelligently, not just for rankings and relevancy, but because searchers want to see pages that reflect the terms and phrases they're querying, especially in the snippet (title & meta description). My latest Whiteboard Friday on keywords and topics https://moz.com/blog/can-seos-stop-worrying-keywor... covered this in detail, and was very clear that using topics only and ignoring keywords was a path I don't recommend.
Thanks Rand!
I completely appreciate your position - I was trying to take a tongue-in-cheek, flippant tone when putting you up as the anti-keyword person, which may not have come across.
I don't think anyone is seriously saying we should forget about keywords (and I don't think anyone seriously believes that anyone is saying that). I just wanted to test the extent to which keywords are still important.
I'm with Rand, I love this sort of experiment, with actual data to back-up (or refute!) your theories - good work Sam. One thing I'd suggest: repeating the study in a month or two. Google is, it seems, getting better at understanding users' language and intent so... if this is the case, will the importance of keywords diminish as the importance of topics rises? Only one way to find out...
Hi Sam,
You said you put the words through a key word tool. Which one did you use?
I want to try to run this experiment on my own to better understand how it works.
Here's a possible correlation:
Volume of Authority Content within Topic.
RankBrain understands Real Estate (homes for sale) and Credit better than any others in your study. How much content is out there in each vertical? Can you report how many results Google gives for each search? And how many of these have high Domain Authority? If RankBrain is fed a lot of high authority content in a topic, it's likely to figure out topic relationships quicker there than anywhere else.
Follow up experiment:
What Topics are Covered in the Top 10 Domain Authority Websites?
Of those Top 10 authority sites, what are the topics that have the most volume? You could essentially take all the pages from Wikipedia, and feed their text content into a Tag Cloud Generator. Or better yet, only select the Wikipedia pages with Page Authority above a certain number.
This list https://moz.com/top500 might suggest to start with Wikipedia, NYtimes, BBC, CNN, and HuffingtonPost.
Hey Sam!
Really fantastic post about keywords. It became an interesting topic for me to do analysis after reading this post and WBF's post that is https://moz.com/blog/can-seos-stop-worrying-keywor.....
Good experiment!! In my opinion keywords are still very important, but we don't have to disregard "topics" and we have to combine a good keyword research with a good written articles with valuable content.
Otherwise I think the results can be different for different scenarios and in ones will be better the uses of exact keywords than in others
Thanks Sam,
Google keeps mentioning that machine learning is constantly improving on its search blog & the algorithms are constantly becoming netter so while some of the keywords might be understood by Google and the matching ones might fetch the results as well its not yet at a stage when this can be replicated in every possible scenario.
Also, I do agree that the sample size is somewhat limited here but then you couldn't conduct an experiment soon enough to write a blog post if you took a much larger sample size so as is your conclusion, I would agree "Both keywords and topics are important." & as SEO agencies we should focus on improving ourselves consistently to deliver value to the clients.
I guess if we focus on both of them for the time being it will add to the overall value we provide to the customers. But yes, we greatly appreciate the experiments and an attempt to provide something different here.
Sam... Great experiment!
Would be interested to see the following:
IF we take recent admissions at face value, with rankbrand, links and content being 3 major factors / signals to influence search visibility, adding some content & link facets into the mix to standardize could be good.
Hmmm... if I could find some time, maybe I will :-)
Cheers
Great experiment!! As some people has said above, the most important thing for SEO is to create good and valuable content.
Great experiment Sam, really impressive!! I agree that keywords are very important, but you have to really be careful about topics. The combination of two elements is powerful.Thanks for sharing!!
Great experiment, Sam.
I wonder how this would look in other languages. English content is everywhere online, so they will probably understand that better than Italian, French or other lesser widespread languages. It would be interesting to see if the results would be the same or worse (as I suspect).
Great Experiment, Sam
I would have liked to know if this experiment extracts the same results in a different language with syntax like the Spanish
Really neat experiment. I would like to see this done at a local level or a test where the volume of traffic was lower for a selected group of keywords. Like someone mentioned above with AirBnB I believe most travel searches are occupied with the main flight/hotel/car rental sites.
I don't thing they are dead, even the most important SEO factor is creating good content. Anyway a good keyword research is also important.
Totally agree, goood content is becoming the key.
Hi Sam, great experiment and write-up. I wonder if exact-match anchor text has anything to do with the results? I.e. some of the page you're looking at could have strong links with exact-match anchor text for some of the synonyms but not others? And that impact could be overwhelming the relevance metric for the given term, vs. the relevance that Google might assign for a synonym?
I thought the same Michael, I am sure others have. The plethora of other influential variables mean that the experiment can never be fully controlled, and the outcome of "maybe" is fairly predictable in these circumstances. Still, SEOs love looking for the holy grail of a definitive answer!
I find writing as naturally as possible and including known key phrases where appropriate. Keyword research is certainly not dead! Great article.
Very interesting Post,
It is true that keywords are not very important these days but still keywords are not dead.
Main thing is that you have to focus on you content. Your content must be unique and informative, but the selection of keyword for the content is the still important..
Very interesting post and one that does deserve attention. A factor that should not me missed is that you must do the keyword research to make the most relevant topics from and from that research you can create beautiful 10X content that drives search. For someone to think that creating pages for a client with no keyword research is a good idea is silly as it gives a baseline to set goals on what the content to based on.
I will say that the SEO strategy has become more challenging in a good way forcing us to create topics that can best serve the user and not just a page showing up in results due to certain keywords that are being tagged in the meta and content.
Great post and breakdown of future aspects and even current for SEO.
It's interesting to see the shift in Google over the years as it recognizes some keywords can be interchangeable, especially in the medical field with conditions and ailments. Being in the medical field, we tend to have similar content on our websites and that's when topics come into play for us. I stress to my team that strong, engaging content is what we need to strive for to compete in the SERPs. I just trust Google will reward us for it!
The unfortunate part of this is there's one major factor that can't possibly be taken into account when doing a study like this. That is the overall unreliability of rank tracker tools. I've used and read up on tons of them across the board, and there's simply no way to say that the results are reliable.
That being said, I think this falls in line with what we've seen coming from Google. Based on the discussion with Andrey from Google last week, it seems that their algo (specifically involving RankBrain) will weigh different factors depending on the specific search. Because of this, it's hard to say that specific factors are or aren't useful across the board. Only until a factor has shown that's it's completely unreliable (like PageRank and Meta Keywords) that we can unequivocally say they are phased out. Until then, we have to assume that for some queries, exact match will be important and for some it won't be.
And I don't think it's a matter of do, know, or go. It's most likely deeper than that meaning it most likely depends wholly on the specific query from the specific user.
Unless your rank tracking tool is browsing privately and clearing cache and cookies with every data pull... that data isn't any good.
In addition, Google personalizes EVERY search, and rank tracking software cannot duplicate this effect.
Since I remember saying that the keywords die:)
Nice experiment. Never doubted the presence and importance of keywords, but I can see the topics are gaining more ground. However, I don't see keywords disappearing anytime soon. But rather, groups of keywords will make up a topic much the same way pages will make up a site.
Hence, use the site to target a topic and the individual pages to target keywords. That's my take on it anyways.
So nice post! Keywords are not dead and they play an important role in boosting your traffic. Though today, keywords seem to reduce their value, we also need them to focus on our content and make it unique and informative. The core point is how to select good keyword for the content.
long tail keywords re not dead but mostly site owner used traffic keywords in place of long tail.
"Both keywords and topics are important" Agreed: keywords... as well as synonyms and complimentary words - all together will help in the top department. Interesting study Sam :-)
People have been banging on about LSI for years, and I do accept that it's not just a phenomenon, nothing quite beats having your keywords in your title, url, meta description and appear in the onpage content - thus forming relevance to the searchers query.
The thing about LSI is that whilst it makes a lot of sense I would prefer to find a page that speaks my language and uses the same words as me to describe things. I think Google recognises this, so if you have 2 equal pages covering the same topics 1 uses one set of keywords and the other uses a different set to say the same thing Google is going to show the most relevant result to the searchers query, so in my opinion of course keywords aren't going anywhere if the aim of the game is to provide relevant results!
I just Said That,
Exact keywords are great right now, topics will possibly become equally influencial as Google evolves. I have always found that the best way to work is to introduce these new concepts at a moderate rate. It's not one or the other, black or white. It's a ongoing progression that you need to be aware of, not a new fangled concept you need to jump aboard feet first.
I agree with you, not to be alone with our key words that we have chosen but also to continue innovating in content and also new keywords that will continue to help us in a few
Great experiment! In my opinion, keywords still plays important role in page rank especially when it's used in the page title. I have tried an experiment on my website previously
You can try it yourself too!
Dear Sam,
I just loved your post and I I'd like to ask you something: I'm working in a real estate agency, and I don't have much topics to talk to, but I totally love doing keyword research, so my question is: "when you talk about topics, is there anyway I can put that in my business?" I mean, if I don't have any topic to talk to, what can I do?
Thank you very much!
Hello Sam, that's a very thoughtful post. Thanks for sharing the experiment with us! IMO, keywords are anything but dead. In fact, it has become more central to Google's ranking algorithm, e.g. Hummingbird. However, as Cyrus has quite expertly explained in this post, smart SEO's should do away with the old-school approach of being aggressive about using keyword, anchor texts or linking indiscriminately. Keywords, used with strong context, can complement your SEO process.
This post is simple and straightforward but it is also quite useful. I was considering doing something similar to this myself! Sam saved me the work. Thank you Sam!
It's a great post to read. Keywords are still playing an important role but a great content make them unique and informative.
Hey Sam,
Thanks for sharing this post!
I agree on the keywords and its importance, However, if we talk about the relevant topics and when we choose those topics over the search engine. It is not so necessary that the relevant topics would have the decent search volume when we convert topics into keywords.
What we generally do is we always would like to go with keywords suggestions (suggested by keyword planner) after struggling with the various combinations. My question to you is about how we match both the things - first topics and second keywords, when we are really bothered about rankings and conversions?
all very nice! Keywords are not dead, and they play an important role in promoting your traffic. Although today, the keyword is likely to reduce their value, we also need to concentrate on our content and make it unique and informative. The key point is how to choose good keywords for content.
Very Nice! Thanks for sharing SAM!
Great post to choose the best keywords for your business!
Great article. tis is the seo that i want. thanks
I don´t think that keywords are dead for Google and I don´t see if there are any alternative ways for search engines to identify relevant webpages based on specific search terms and determin which ones to list for the user or not.
The keywords have a weight in the SEO only that have changed the percentage of importance
Love this article Sam, Super amazing experiment. Keep writing like that.
Thanks for doing this. I did similar research for my work to demonstrate that we need to start focussing more on specific keywords and not just consider concepts. Google isn't dumb. Even when they can accurately decipher synonymy, the use of different synonymous terms also indicates different intent and outside of a specific context, the terms may have different meanings. Just think about things like band names and animal names and slang. Google wants to match intent and usage not impose their view of it.
Great experiment.
For me keywords are not dead, they have simply changed their value.
Since my digital marketing experience began in traditional SEO, I have a soft spot for keyword research (and word puzzles - but that's not quite the same thing). I totally understand and agree that quality topics and content are the best way to begin strategy for an article, but it's nice to see that keyword research is still relevant.
This post is simple and straightforward but it is also quite useful. I was considering doing something similar to this myself! Sam saved me the work. Thank you Sam!
I'm afraid the sample size of 100 keywords is way too low to have a conclusion. If it was a sample of 100 groups x 100 keywords, then we could talk about insights and interesting data, but 100 is basically nothing.
I have a feeling that we'd see totally different results with a larger sample size.
Nice Experiment Sam! Loved the ways you portrayed your work in this article. Keywords still acts as a crucial part when it comes to SEO. Using relevant keywords in your content is a good practice. Content should be user-friendly & informative for Google to Rank. Well I mainly take care of website speed, loading time, device friendliness, and content.
Love experiments like this Sam!
Very Interesting blog Sam! Thanks for sharing your research.
But i think Keywords are not dead though you can say they are not as much effective as they used to be in past but litrelly they are still very important and help bringing your content on the top.
Don't be silly! Keywords are not dead. The matter here is that lots of SEO makers don't know how to use them effectively to create the good content. We need such the keywords to attract users and audiences to our page!
Hey Floyed sorry to say but I am not agreeing with you. In fact Google used to figure out what searcher is looking for; deliver the things that are actually relevant to the users query. Keywords are there to describe specific details of the webpage; not to attract people. We and Google do all the things by keeping in mind the user point of view, by which we can help them out and this is the only way to be sustain on top in SERP.
Topics in itself are keyword but the only difference is that they may not be the part of your SEO campaign. kudos to new feature of MOZ tool which really help in getting idea about topic of page you have desire to optimize. I think in any ways saying "keywords are dead" would be wrong, as its root of SEO. Its almost impossible to create the path of success without having any idea of destination.
The best way to generate quality results in terms of content / topics in SEO is to put yourself in place of a visitor or user. And also we can't ignore the 'Research' activity in SEO in every phrase of it.
Very interesting to see that there is no difference in transactional pr non-transactional searches.
Google will get more and more sophisticated in finding the correct answers, but probably the user will also get more specific about the questions asked...
I do agree with Rand to focus on content rather than Keywords because nowadays I see many changes in snippet over SERP and the pages that were ranking well using semantic content. Snippets are auto generated by Google that fits best as per the user query.
I think using Keywords in our content is not going to help any more to rank well; yeah it poses some importance but focusing so much over it is not a good deal.
You forgot one very important factor that might be affecting the varying similarities between the different topic groups – market leaders. Some markets have strong leaders who rank in top 10 for all major keywords related to their niche, think AirBNB and "vacation apartment rental".
Interesting experiment, no doubt keywords are still really important. The only thing is changed is how we use targeted keywords in post/topics.
Totally agree with Rand. Ofc in SEO we have so many "maybe" that is hard to define the best strategy in every SEO detail. Focusing on narrow topic in content creation gave the the best results in SERPs.
Whilst I love a good experiment, I sometimes find all of this a bit futile. Google's algo's evolve at a pace that none of us fully understand, we really don't know (exactly) which variables have what (exact) % of influence, and we never will. We make an educated guess, and by god some of us are good at it, but we'll never get a definitive answer. Hence the "maybe". It's always a maybe.
Exact keywords are great right now, topics will possibly become equally influencial as Google evolves. I have always found that the best way to work is to introduce these new concepts at a moderate rate. It's not one or the other, black or white. It's a ongoing progression that you need to be aware of, not a new fangled concept you need to jump aboard feet first...
Really Good Post on Keywords in SEO. Value of Keywords in SEO has been changed now. We bloggers have to understand the use of keywords in our writing.
I agree to this if topic is catchy but keyword is not good than very difficult to get traffic. Catchy topic and keywords both are important. For more on search engine, read - https://itservicestalk.com/search-engine/
I've noticed big variations in local serps with changes to city/state/zip combinations. Could probably do a similar study with locations and get the same results. Thanks!
Great article. I love analytical articles like these, specially when it is such a hot topic. There is a fine line between keywords being beneficial and detrimental, which I guess is why there are such differing opinions.
Good experiment that confirms keywords really relevant. But I think you can focus on topics, but this doesn´t mean you forget about keywords. Both things are important. Thanks for sharing your experiment!!
Nice Experiment, I have always been interested in two type of posts - Keywords (they are the seeds ) and Content ( its water to the seed).
Comment - "Keywords can never be dead, they are seeds of Money and Internet marketing"
Good tests to run from time to time to see if the algorithm is up to something or not. Thanks Sam
Very interesting, good ignition for conversation. A very strong argument can still be made in favour of keywords - when used properly of course, some food for thought re: Keywords... https://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts
This is a wonderful experiment and it's always good to kick some sense of reality into our marketing minds! I think I agree with the conclusion that both keywords and concepts are relevant. At the same time I am convinced that we will see different trends as to how Google identifies the most relevant content for a specific search term within a specific user need as AlphaGo evolves and learns further.
best recognition of article was given through happiness as i enjoyed the way you listed the points. i gives 5 out 5 rating thanks for the post around the new way !