This one keeps popping up, so I'm taking a short blog post to address it as quickly and efficiently as possible (mostly because I have an SEOmoz board meeting tomorrow, so I need my zzzs).
Many SEOs ask themselves how many individual word and phrases are ideal to target together on a single URL. The tough part is - there's no hard and fast answer. The number can be as low as 1 and as high as 15 (maybe 20). Below, I'll share the process I like to use to find the right answer and include a real life example to help illustrate:
Choosing Keywords for the Page:
We're not playing long tail with targeted SEO like this, so you'll want to do your keyword research and assemble your list. Usually, it will look something like this (at least in the early stages):
Naturally, you'd want to refine this list and cross-compare with a few other services (I've used MSN AdCenter above, but I don't like relying on less than three independent sources when generating lists). From the list, you need to know which keywords have actual relevance to the page content. This can get a bit tricky, and our "Ted Baker" example above can be used to perfectly illustrate.
Let's say I've got a landing page for "Ted Baker" on an e-commerce website. I've also got specific categories for "Ted Baker Shoes," "Ted Baker Eyewear," and "Ted Baker Dress Shirts" - in fact, I probably have a dozen sub-categories or more. So which phrases do I target on the landing page vs. the interior pages? My answer is always to go with searcher intent. If the search intent is too broad to be classified as any of these obvious subcategories, try to target on the main category landing page (even if that gives you a lot of terms).
In our example, I'd have the following terms targeted on the "Ted Baker" category landing page:
- Ted Baker
- Ted Baker London
- Ted Baker Clothing
- Ted Baker Mens
- Ted Baker Mens Clothing
- Ted Baker Mens Collection
I'd reserve phrases like "Ted Baker Shoes" and "Ted Baker Eyewear" for those more specific pages. They're more likely to earn relevant anchor text links on their own and more targeted to searcher intent, so even if I get lower traffic (which can sometimes happen when you split things up, at least), I'm probably making up for it with increased conversion rates.
Targeting Multiple Terms & Phrases on a Single Page:
Here's how I'd incorporate those terms:
Title Tag:
Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org
Meta Description:
A Complete Selection of Ted Baker London Men's Clothing with Apparel & Accessories from the past 3 Years of Collections. In Stock Now with Fast, Free Shipping.
H1 Header Tag:
Ted Baker London | Men's Clothing Collection
H2 Subheader:
The Ted Baker Men's Collection features classic British tailoring with fun, modern fabrics and designs.
With this formula (and probably a few uses of the keyword phrases above sprinkled in subeaders and bold text on the page), you've got a very good opportunity to rank for half a dozen unique phrases on a single page.
What NOT to Do:
The most common mistake I see with multiple phrase targeting is to use a strategy like this:
Title:
Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men's Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com
Meta Description:
Ted Baker On Sale. Ted Baker Men's, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Collection, Ted Baker Online.
Honestly, searchers have gotten very savvy, and even if this strategy temporarily works to get you rankings (which is usually not the case at Google, though Yahoo! and MSN can be more forgiving), the expectation when you see a listing like this in the SERPs is to instantly distrust the website. Even if you get the click (this strategy can lower CTR, too), conversion rates will suffer, and 9 times out of 10, the site turns out to be a crappy, low quality affiliate site or a site whose design is so lost in the 90's that finding the checkout is like digging through the trash bin outside the Qwik-E-Mart for a lost retainer.
One last note - getting links to pages with titles/descriptions like these is pulling teeth, too. Linkers are even pickier than buyers, so make sure you run a top-of-the-line site and reflect it in your visible SERP listings or suffer the consequences - a competitor who starts to outearn you on the link graph.
So How Many Terms/Phrases on a Page?
As many as makes sense for a visitor, a potential buyer, and those who will link. Now it's off to bed - crossing my fingers all goes smoothly tomorrow. :-)
I usually encourage people to work hard on the refined keyword list to get the idea. Usually keyword phrases naturally fall into categories and subcategories:
Territory (Ted Baker London)
General (Ted Baker Mens Clothing)
Gender (Ted Baker Mens)
-> Gender + General (Ted Baker Mens Collection(s)).
This will take time but if you put enough effort in categorizing your key phrases, you will soon define both your site structure and the number of keywords per page that makes sense.
The general rule of thumb is "if you can think of unique useful content for a key phrase, make a separate page for it" (compare: 'Ted Baker Mens Collection' vs 'Ted Baker Mens Clothing')
Great approach to groupings! Thanks Lately I've been grouping by personas as well (different types of visitors) and these categories:
Buyers
Researchers
Press
The most powerful point of this post by Rand is how he constructed the Title tag, Description, H1, and H2.
Let's disect it:
Rand used the keyphrase he was targetting first in the title tag. Then used a seperator followed by his secondary keyphrase followed by some noise (important). He finished it off with a pipe and then the website name.
Rand used the primary keyphrase again and again put it first in the H1 tag. USed a seperator again and this time used a slight variation from the Title tag on the secondary keyphrase without the noise. I contend that he could have put the noise either in the Title tag or in the H1 tag but he was very smart NOT to make the Title tag and the H1 tag EXACTLY the same. But very similiar instead (important).
Rand uses AGAIN the primary keyphrase first, followed by the secondary keyphrase, followed by a lot of noise (but no more than a normal sentence). This is important because it reiterates what the page content is about but doesn't look spamtastic either. Notice how it LOOKS good and doesn't appear to be keyword stuffed (eventhough it is, just done tasefully).
And lastly Rand writes a magnificient description. The description again has both the primary and secondary keyphrases in the description (which helps avoid Googlebot from choosing it's own description; and it becomes highlighted in the SERs). It also has a phenomenal call to action of the product being in stock and having fast free shipping (a major deterent to online shopping).
Very nice post Rand. Sorry I didn't follow it sooner but I was off on another post today. ;-)
Brent D. Payne
I vote Brent as this month's Top Interpreter & Dissector!
Hi there :)
I just read your article, very good one by the way, and indeed a hot topic.
I do not entirely agree though. If I had a general based website, I'd say everything you've said above is spot on.
However, lets say my website is already niche, and already about Ted. Should I then make a page for each of the phrases you've unconvered, or just one page?
Also, when targeting all of the phrases on one page, does linking to anchors help at all?
Thanks :)
The Poker News Lady
Just came across this post and yes, this definitely sums it all up for me, short and sweet. Well said, Brent...
Yes, this topic will never get old. Even for those of us who have written far too many title tags to count, it is easy to get tripped up. But for those who haven't done this before or do it rarely, this might feel like a life-impacting event! Thankfully, it rarely is that critical and any mistakes can usually be undone.
You've hit on what is certainly the biggest issue I see...the "I don't want to miss out on anything, so I'm going to toss just one more, okay maybe two -- or three more phrases in there." If there was ever a time when "less is more" strategy should come into play, this is it. Focusing on the relevancy and the user experience is big here...just getting them to the site may not be enough any more.
I'd much rather see someone pick that one key phrase, and target it, then see what happens with rankings, traffic, and conversion. If that doesn't move the needle enough, then try bringing in more variation or subtle repetition...but slowly, bit by bit, rather than a keyword dump.
The reality is, even most small sites have enough pages or could break longer pages into 2 or 3 smaller pages to further refine the targeting, and avoid having title tag duplication or tag spew.
I also think it is important to identify the strategy to be used. Homepage strategy may be a little different than the top level categories, which might be different from product detail pages, which will probably be much more mid/long tail focused. This is also important to figure out because the longer tail areas may be too much to handle manually, which (good timing) I think brings us back to the post I did about a year ago now on Identifying Long Tail Patterns, which is ideal in these deeper, narrowly focused, and often abundant pages.
Well said - explaining to a client that you won't be able to prmote every single one of their services on the homepage title tag is often the hardest task.
As I always take things back to publishing I often like to ask whether a magazine publishes its contents on the front cover or just highlights the biggest selling points..
Looking for an updated article on this topic. Surely things have changed since 2008?
Just wanted to say I've been following this blog for a few years now, but this represents my first reply :)
Thanks for the nice example here. I went through a phase in the past when I focused on no more than 2 terms per page, but now I seem to have bumped it up to 3 or 4. However, as you mention, what's more important is serving the searcher adequately and keeping conversions in mind when deciding how many terms can be targeted meaningfully.
I love how you continue posting articles which address the fundamentals, by the way. Experts and novices alike can find value from the same article. Talk about knowing your audience :)
very good point on the meta description and title! you can still see many sites having their keywords stuffed there. They think more about their ranking and not about what human read in their SERP, by stuffing those metas ! as you said, at the end it does not pay and create more traffic!
Agreed.
Like in Rand's example, free shipping is one of our biggest selling points, and reflecting that in the meta description and our PPC ads has had quite an impact on our CTR.
Dear Sir,
i am Learnin g from you along time through you Posts I must you have phenomenal Skills and experimental brain I am always get inpired Keep up the Good Work.
As for the Post is Great Like always.
Regards,
Ahmed Adnan
In addition to the "relevance" of the keywords clubbed for one page, I would also look at the search volume from by Google AdWords. If the volumes are above your cut off for keywords that comprise "high volume" then you must have a separate page for that keywords. Otherwise, if you have 2 or more for a page, make sure you include each of the keyword phrase in some H2 or H3 tags - and write a paragraph with those phrases and some variants.
Thanks again Rand.
In addition to the intended info I enjoyed the glimpse into the way you construct your title-desc-h1-h2. More posts with examples for the noobs please :)
Thanks Rand,
You touched on something here that I want highlight due to its importance.Target INTENT, not ACTION.
Do wha?
Write out what the ideal user's intent is before you begin your keyword research and tag writing. Do you want those looking generally for mens clothing, or for mens clothing by this specific brand?
This helps to narrow down and specify what key terms to start title tags with and place in subheads like you show in this post. Adversily, if you target actions you could miss the users intent all together and get the pleasure of explaining dimsal conversion rates.
This may sound a bit 'SEO 101' for most here, but its so dang important that I thought I'd bring it out again. especially when you see some of the title tags and descriptions floating around Google still.
oh.. and 'manamialameseo.com'...LOVE IT! HA!
Levi - that is so important!
Thinking about the user's intent - what they are looking for and how it relates to what you have to offer - is so important.
I would add that the first part of the title tag (maybe the first 12-14 characters) play a significant role in multiple site shopping. If someone is comparing your clothing site to another, having a sound start to your title tag can mean the difference between them coming back to your tab of their browser or going to someone elses.
'Ted Baker London' is great for this too . . . much better than 'Manamialameseo.com' followed by the important stuff.
You would think this would be common sense but sadly too many sites do the exact opposite. PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait...wait...
Yes I use a a (|) quite a lot in titles, I noticed it when looking at a number of well optimized and highly ranked pages. It also makes the title look neat n tidy IMO.
First I'd like to thank the commentators and the site.
In my site, was has worked well is separating my title keywords with the pipe (|). I assume you can use any separator like the dash or the colon. The idea being that the search engines identify the separator as another keyword.
Thanks,
Jimi P.
I will target for 2-4 keywords per page. Your style of on-page SEO looks very similar to what I do, which is good to know since I haven't been in the game that long.
Great information, I agree with everything that you talk about to what increases all the SEO efforts and also what it takes to get a site ranked high. https://darylsaari.veretekk.com
15 terms on a page does sounds like nonsense. Yo better have 3-5 of them, not more. Less is more.
Nice one, Rand. I had a good laugh reaching the end of the post. Usually I don't dwelve too mcuh on analyzing what and where (but take a sneak peach at Google Insights before writing the post). If after i read my post and see that i "sounds" spammy then I'll get on it and modify. I like fluidity and so does our readers. I'll tell you how many keywords i use: 1,2,3,4,5,6... and as many as I need to :))
Thanks a lot for this post. Really it is very helpful for all keyword Researcher.
I was wondering if limiting the exposure to keywords that had a good number of impressions would work better than diluting it? For my site it receives impressions 5 times for a large # of keywords, I've sorted out the negative key words but there are still 552 keywords on the list of exposure with only 85 clicks from only 16 keywords. If I went down the list and added all but those which were either actually performing or getting good exposure might-en I improve performance?
Hello, just came across this site, very helpful info.
Wondering if any one can help with a wordpress question I have. it is seo related as well. thanks
Wow - great post, even 2 years later. Pretty good for in a hurry to catch some zzzs.
I've made many of these errors in the past but won't do so in the future. Whenever in doubt, do what a real person would do, ie., if you needed a bio as a speaker at a conference, would you really list every single thing that might tag you? No, you would say what is relevant to the conference you are attending. Same with describing a website.
This is probably the best write up that I've seen on how to properly target different keywords and phrases on a page.
I defintely took notice of a couple of things that I could potentially do differently to help my keyword targeting and page structure.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how to optimize a page for misspellings or synonyms or tanslations ?
Ex:
I have a business that offers only one basic service- invoice factoring. If you offer multiple producs like Ted, I understand why every page should be optimized for a different keyword phrase but if I only offer one product, wouldn't it be more effective to optimize each page for the phrase, invoice factoring? Another idea would be to optimize each page with a different name for factoring. For example, on my Why Us? page, I could use the phrase, Accounts Receivable Financing. On the Get Started page I could use Accounts Receivable Funding. On the How it Works Page, I could use AR Funding. On my FAQ page I could use AR Financing. On my Contact Us page I could use Invoice Funding, and so on. Is this a good strategy?
I like to think this is a good strategy, but that might be because I do that. When I have a specific website which doesn't do much, I target different keywords on different pages. And it does seem to work... :)
Hi
I thought that you shouldn't focus on more than say 2-4 keywords on a single page. I find it difficult to maintain a satisfactory keyword density if using more keywords than that. Only exception is if I can use all my keywords regularly and naturally within the same content.
Thank you Rand. With onpage things like this I sometimes find it hard going from the theory of page titles and meta keywords to the practice of applying this to a real world situation. Great to see you give these detailed examples of best practice!
Agreed with you rand !! Thanks for sharing !!
Hi, those are really pointers about stuffind the title tags with keywords and sinonymus with the only intention to get rankings. I think viewers deserve the right to be presented with meaningful titles so that they can reach an informed decision prior to clicking. Unfortunately, the cyberspace if packed with websites abusing title tags.
So the What NOT to do strategy applied for the homepage as well? I have seen many websites with title tag like that.
Thanks Rand!
Regards,
Zafar Ahmed
There is a very fine line between LSI & keyword stuffing. As long as you are not crossing the line and end up diluting the theme of the page, target as many terms on a page. Mostly the theme breaks and get diluted on any thing above 4 keywords. So the bottom line is don't be greedy and endup confusing the search engines and be very precise what you want to rank for.
This is the most simplest illustration of keyword targeting. Thumbs up Rand! :)
Good clear examples, although on the title example:
Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org
I just think you should use the same dividers, be it a "-" or a "|" between sections of the title. Otherwise it can look cluttered or ugly at the top of the page.
Definitely - and what do people have against the humble colon? It does exactly the same job as a dash or divider, but takes up less characters (handy when you're trying to fit everything into 155 or thereabouts...)
What do you think about targeting multiple terms on an Index page using dashes
for example
Kettles - Toasters - Irons - Washing machines
The site in Question has few pages at this stage.
Doesnt have a seperate page for each product
The flow of the content really dictates how many keywords you can safely target, so it's really difficult to create hard and fast rules in this area.
Looking at the page titles in the example, " | " often gets my Q&A guy seething as screen readers can just read this out as "bar" so I get to not use this one anymore - looks good, sounds bad! (So I've been told!) Do people really use lame page titles like that still?
clear, concise, and to the point... nice post Rand.
Thorough post about on-page, now for the off-page, where the continuity and magic happen. In my book, any two words on a page can be keywords depending on the anchors, their roots and the modifiers. However the relevance factor and score increase when you keep it concise and specific.
I account competitive rankings to 60% on page and 40% off page SEO. So, this tactic will age with time with grace and keep giving back for months to come without having to tweak the page any further.
How many keywords should I target on a page?
Personally, I think the answer to this question requires competitive analysis. For the highly-competitive keywords, I prefer to target just one keyword phrase per page. After all, when you think about it... a page can only be perfectly optimized for one keyword phrase. For example, there can only be one file name for a page, and there's only one "first word in the Title." I see a lot of sites that try to optimize the home page for every keyword phrase they can think of. Instead of ranking really well for a few keywords, they end up ranking on pages 2 and 3 for many keywords... which doesn't bring in nearly as much traffic.
...and what "one keyword phrase" would you happen to be targeting? <joke>
Took a double take when I saw your Avatar - the most expensive keyword on the Web!
Good article
Great psot Rand! This will help my site out a lot because we are in the early stages of developing it and those meta descritions really will help out. I was unaware that Google does not like the keyword stuffing.
Thanks
Nothing is more surprising to me than the lack of good on-page content from SEO's these days. It seems like the initial thoughts / teachings are lost and it's just turned into a keyword stuffing battle to most...
Posts like this help remind everyone it's not always a matter of buying link farms and doing evil things to rank... sometimes you just need to spend a little more time on SEO 101.
I view the META description tag as a marketing space for the page. It should contain the keywords (so it gets displayed in the SERPs) but it should entice the user to click the link. So, I stay away from spammy keyword stuffed descriptions.
What about the URL Path? Should it be:
1) /Ted-Baker-London-Mens-Clothing-Collection-Apparal-and-Accessories
2) /Ted-Baker-London-Mens-Clothing-Collection
3) /Ted-Baker-London-Mens-Clothing-Collection-2005-2008
"What about the URL Path?"
Personally, I try to limit page file names to 3 dashes max, remove stop words, and incorporate only the best keywords.
This is a really informative post, great job Randy. I could use a lot of the information you supplied me about Meta descritions which will really help my customers campaigns out Also I liked what you had to say about the usage of keywords. This blog is always nicely written and I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.
Just a heads up... his name is Rand. There's no "y" at the end. :)