Nick thats an excellent post for increasing keyword footprint. Never aware of this strategy though.Undoubtedly we will try this method for our tough keywords. Reply
Great post! I haven’t found any good software to manage vast amounts of pages and keywords to keep control of KW cannibalization. Seems there’s no great KW mgmt solution short of enterprise tools. Are there any you have found? Reply
Cheers Joe. Me neither, though I have been chatting with a friend about building a simple Ruby app to do this. For now I spun up a crude Google Sheet that will at least check duplicate URL’s across SERP’s, but you’ll need to use something like LinkClump to grab all the SERP URL’s. You can access it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p-pOu0fPgevQeMFZS0iGlt6epksldVO06USajpZVL-Q/edit#gid=0 Reply
Hi Nick, Came here from your Keyword Cannibalisation email, which, along with this post, are both excellent and actionable guides to an issue of increasing importance. (Is it just me or has Google got MUCH better at determining related topics recently?) One problem I’ve seen on multiple small sites is the home page competing with a sub page for the root keywords for the domain. For example: http://nicks-blue-widgets.com ranks for “blue widgets” (page 1, ‘cos that’s how we roll) http://nicks-blue-widgets.com/widgets also ranks for “blue widgets” As you say in the article, you would normally fold weaker pages into stronger ones in this scenario. But the home page might be a special case because from a user point of view you DO usually want a whole subpage explaining what blue widgets are, and from a design point of view you don’t want that 1,000 words of content skewing the home page, but from an SEO point of view it’s a big blue nightmare. So far I’ve seen Google rank BOTH the homepage and the sub page, but both lower than I’d expect, and eventually (weeks or months later), drop one of them entirely in favour of the other, which then recovers some (perhaps not all) of its expected rank. For some sites I’m still waiting for one of the entries to drop. => Is this consistent with what you would expect, and do you have any advice for these situations? Thanks and regards, Paul Reply
Hey Paul – So glad you found the email (and this post) useful! RE: Google’s ability to score and rank related topics getting much better; YES, totally. I’m seeing more and more groupings of domains for similar terms, versus the old days where you used to get huge swings of different results for even singular vs. plural kw’s! Yes I also see this a lot, and more times than not it’s pretty easy to diagnose… usually 1 of 2 things is happening (or sometimes both) the site has the category keyword in the page title of their homepage -OR- they have the keyword on the homepage in plain text but DON’T have it linked to the category / hub page. IMO I would put more emphasis on the homepage around the brand and core root terms (in this case widget, widget supplier, colored widgets) and focus on building more relevancy for the shoulder term (blue widgets) on the category page, then use a mix of on-page/off-page signals to beef up the relevance for the modifier kw (blue). Thanks again! Nick Reply
Wow, that’s a great reply, Nick. Obviously rests on and encapsulates a lot of experience. Thanks very much for your clear, actionable advice! Reply
Hi Nick, Great article as usual. One related question: is it a good idea to use LSI keywords as anchor texts when linking from different sources to your money site? Assume you have 10 guest posts linking to your site. Is it a good idea to use 10 different LSI KW’s as anchor texts as opposed to for instance one or two anchor texts using main keywords and the rest of anchor texts would be generic terms or URL of the page etc…. Thank you Reply
Hey Sam – The answer to this (as with most things in SEO) is really “it depends.” It depends on how relevant the surrounding content and topics are of the linking page, and if it makes sense for the LSI terms to be used as anchors from that page. In that same vein just acquiring links with LSI anchors to pages on your site is not going to be as helpful as if you’re acquiring those links (with those anchors) to the pages targeting those terms and related topics. Hopefully that makes sense 🙂 Thanks for the comment. /n Reply
Pretty awesome idea but I am little bit worried about the keyword density of “micro” and “macro” keywords on that particular page. Interestingly, there is no mention of how this guys have done internal linking to that page. Also external links anchor text is also missed, but I guess it is obvious that they have used it Reply
Hey Krunal – In terms of using “density” to reflect pure stuffing, you’re right.. it’s way heavy on pure repetition of the commercial targeted term. For this strategy I focused exclusively at on-page, but yes – internal links/anchors and external link diversity ratio / anchor mix is definitely going to influence rankings. Reply
Great and helpful article and also I agree with you. All points have own importance in increase the keyword footprint. I also use the same points that you listed in this article. Thanks for sharing with us. Reply
Please stop! I have been using this technique, which I tell people are my “Super Documents” for several years and it works very, very well. I have ranked one page for more than 1,000 phrases several times. I’d rather you didn’t explain it! Reply
Hey Stuart – I know it works, that’s why I’m sharing it… why wouldn’t you want people to learn more about SEO that actually creates results instead of these blogs that just echo the same crap advice and outdated strategies? In any case, thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. Reply
Great article with loads of juicy info – I’ve found LSI Graph to be so useful recently. It does seem that many pages can get away with including a lot of keywords and phrases as long as they use relatively long form content – but I do question if these pages really convert that well as more concise content tends to convert better in my experience. This is especially pertinent when Google is using user metrics as ranking factors. Reply
Thanks Simon. I completely agree here on the conversion likelihood of these pages being low, however, with that said it’s all going to depend on the ad models of the sites. So for example the student loan site may simply to rank TOFU to gain brand awareness, where GoodHousekeeping may be looking simply for pageviews to support their ad model. Time on page, time to long click, dwell time, etc. are definitely qualitative factors that I do believe are weighing more and more heavily on Google’s scoring algorithm, but with that said – long-form content that does address a topic from a more LSI/Holistic perspective is likely to keep users on the page longer – if not reading than scanning to find the information they’re looking for. Reply
Excellent piece Nick. Thanks for sharing! But I was wondering, do you think keyword density still matters? if yes, what’s the preferable percentage for your main keyword? Reply
a wonderful and useful information about keyword research, your article is really very informative and knowledgeable, it give a lot of ideas to work on future thanks for this article Reply
first we want to say that your article is very informative and knowledgeable. looking forward to more post like this. thanx Reply