Forum Moderators: open
From what I've gathered, the take on repreated keyphrases is this.
1) It should be avoided if at all possible.
2) Many people use repeated keyphrases, and with success.
3) It depends on your situation which will occur.
First, let me say I do not wish to repeat keywords to spam or cheat. I am simply forced to do so because the product my website sells simply is known equally well under several different names.
Also, let me tell you a bit about my situation. Our business is part of a very small, very specific market, which is uncompetitive as far as keywords go (only 5 or less real competitors on each product). Also, a very large portion of my competitors repeat keywords excessively, and with success.
Let me illustrate with a tangible example.
(for the sake of discussion, please assume that the chance a potential surfer would use one of the phrases below is equal. No phrase stands out)
"german shepard dog"
"german shepard puppy"
"german shepard canine"
"german shepard hound"
"german shepard pooch"
"german shepard mongrel"
So now my dilemma. B/C it is equally likely that a searcher would use any of the phrases above, I must account for all of them in the page. But, because these phrases are all referring to exactly the same thing, I cannot specialize into individual, targeted pages. Also, "german shepard" and "dog" are both far too general to stand on their own (just believe me on this).
So, here are my choices as a see them:
1) Use them all in the title (i.e. "german shepard dog, german shepard puppy, german shepard canine" etc). and risk being labeled a spammer.
2) Cleverly structure them in the title to eliminate repetitions ("dog german shepard puppy, canine german shepard hound", etc). Is this effective? It seems like this would be totally bizarro for a user to see in a SERP.
3) Bite the bullet and pick one or two of the six, giving up any potential traffic on the rest.
4) Any others?
Any input would be appreciated but most appreciated would be actual solid evidence of anyone that has dealt with this issue with success, especially those people in uncompetitive keyword markets. Our current strategy is to use "german shepard dog, canine, puppy etc". I realize this is useless however, becuase I am essentially giving up on "canine" and "puppy".
Typically, I would prefer to have a page about each. Then link to each page using its phrase, title each page using its page, and use the phrase in the body of each page. I would pick the most competitive one for the home page, and link back to it using its phrase.
Thank you for your response.
If your PageRank is better than the competition,
Generally, my page rank is almost always better than my competiton. However, I find that they often beat me because they use the "german shepard dog, german shepard puppy, german shepard canine" approach, whereas I am using the "german shepard dog, puppy, canine" approach.
then you might get away with the phrases in the body of the page, and the words in the title.
The "might" is what I'm afraid of. The website is the source of almost all of my company's income. We do very little print, tv, radio, or other advertisement. Thus any decision I make impacts the lives of everyone in the company, and a bad decision could in fact be fatal for the company. We are so dependent on G for referrals that I cannot risk being dropped from the SERPS unless I am absolutely sure. But, at the same time, such a huge portion of my direct competition is duplicating keywords, and with (apparent) great success.
Typically, I would prefer to have a page about each. Then link to each page using its phrase, title each page using its page, and use the phrase in the body of each page. I would pick the most competitive one for the home page, and link back to it using its phrase.
I would LOVE to be able to do this. However, I just can't figure out a feasible way to do so. It would be nearly impossible for me to create 6 different pages about the same topic without duplicating content or looking "weird".
Let me get your opinion. What if I focused on three instead of all six? Do you think that having "german shepard dog, german shepard puppy, german shepard canine" would be enough to be dropped from the SERPS?
German Sheppard Dog Site - For Your Puppy, Canine, Hound, Pooch, or Mongrel
Or something like that? Since it's not as competitive as you say, just having all the keywords in the title somehow should be sufficient enough I would think, if also in your body text and links.
Whats wrong with a title like:
German Sheppard Dog Site - For Your Puppy, Canine, Hound, Pooch, or Mongrel
This is similar to my approach now ("German Shepard, Puppy, Canine, Hound, etc").
Basically, if you (or anyone) could tell me:
1) Do you repeat any words in your title and if so, how many?
2) If above is yes, are you successful? Do you come up 1st for your targeted keyphrases?
3) Have you ever been penalized by G for this? If so, what was the penalty? Lower Page Rank? 0 Page Rank?
These questions are particularly pertinant for those in a very small, specific market.
There is discussion about whether the extra words in the title reduce the weight of the searched words.
I can't say if you'd gt dropped for using three, three word phrases in a page title; but it seems unlikely.There is discussion about whether the extra words in the title reduce the weight of the searched words.
Yes. I read that thread. It adds another angle to my quandry. Am I better off with 3 diluted keyphrases, or 1 concentrated keyphrase?
I think I am going to proceed with 3 phrases each containing a single repeated word. If G penalizes me for this it would be incredibly unfair, as my compitors often use 5 - 6 repreated words in their title, and I've even counted as many as 8 (yes, unbelievable but true). One more question, if I am penalized, will the penalty be limited to the offending page only, or will it affect other pages of the site?
Hopefully this will work out in my favor, otherwise I'll have to dust of my resume :)
This is hard to put into a sentence, but if there's a choice of six different phrases, it depends on how relatively competitive they are compared to each other to be able to decide which of them needs to have the exact phrase in the title with the words right next to each other in the exact order.
It's word order relative to how competitive the phrases are in relation and in comparison with each other, which also tells you how important the proximity is. With some less competitive, if the first word of a subordinate, secondary phrase is at the beginning of the title and the second word is a few words away toward the end of the title - that could be ok for that phrase, whereas with a more competitive phrase the two words need to be right next to each other at the beginning of the title in the exact order.
Did that make sense? If not I'll try to re-write it so it's clearer. I know exactly what I'm trying to say. :)
Make a list, and look up how many searches for each of the phrases. Then look up how competitive they are compared to each other, AND examine the top ten or so and see what percentage of those sites are using the exact phrase, and where, for each of your search phrases. With some, you might find that none have the words next to each other. With still others, there may only be one of the words in the title (or none) with the other word (or both words) only in the body text.
Or some phrases may be predominating in link text pointing to the site, which can compensate and give a lot of leverage coupled with the other factors that are taken into consideration.
Analyzing these things can tell you what's most important to have in that title, and where in the title to have it, including the word order necessary and how close they need to be to each other.
Thanks for the clear response, you did an excellent job explaining. So, to sum up, I need to get a clearer picture of exactly how often each search term in used and stucture my title in such a way that the most competitive terms appear exactly in order and less competitive terms appear in close proximity to each other.
Or some phrases may be predominating in link text pointing to the site, which can compensate and give a lot of leverage coupled with the other factors that are taken into consideration.
Truly, the most amazing thing to me in my recent forays into SEO has been the importance of link text. I am sure there are a great number of ways I can increase my exposure in this manner as well.
Marcia nailed it.
I do a little SEO on the side - not full-time. The jobs I like the very best are the ones where I
look at an existing page and see "Company_Name" as the title of a small non-branded site.
Almost as good are the ones that read "Company_Name: Product_Name".
I then know I can "work a miracle" even if all I do is change the title to
"Concise_Product_Description: Company_Name".
Of course, I'd never take so little time with a site, but if I need to work on it for an extended
period, and it's approaching the predicted time for a big SE spider to start re-indexing, I'll
upload just that one small title change first, and it helps.
On a personal note: When I look at search results and see, "Dogs, pooches, puppies, hound,
canine, pets" as the title, I read it more like, "spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam", and I'll try
the next link down first. So, try to make it look good, too - like bron2drv's suggestion.
Good luck!
Jim
It might pay to use plural and singular in some cases, where both could be search on. But not unless the singular has good odds. Generally it's the plural that's searched on for products, so if there will be a repetition it might pay to us a modifying word to narrow it down to a more targeted phrase.
That's where value of the research comes in. The title is a very valuable piece of web site real estate, you want to pick and choose your best materials to build on it. There's a limit of 8 or 9 words before it's truncated by Google. The searcher has his search words in his head - you want him to find that phrase or at least part of it, and at the same time entice him to click on yours rather than the others.
Take those dogs. Will people search for German Shepherd dogs or German Shepherds? Are they looking for a loving pet or a champion bred dog for shows?
How about: "German Shepherds - Cuddly German Shepherd Puppies" for a title on the puppy page?
Then in the page text you tell about how if they're looking for a puppy (singular) that will grow into an affectionate, loyal family pet (sales words), that your German Shepherd pups (short version plural using a main phrase singular - together!) are bred from a specially chosen line of German Shepherds(main phrase plural)...
How much variety and how many forms of the words were just crammed into one paragraph, just like normal conversation? If you're selling those dogs you'll be talking about those dogs. It's not even SEO, you're talking to your customers. In actual practice you'd have a good amount of text on the page, so you'd make sure the phrasing was distributed the right way in the proper places on the page.
But you've gotten a wide variety of words into the site text, and the title is part of it. When you see "cuddly puppies" you think of a chubby little puppy you want to pick up and hug. You've made a clickable title and used your keywords so that family that's looking will be able to find your dogs. You don't help the searcher find what they're looking for if you don't do that.
In highly competitive categories, I generally avoid trying to wring more than two keyword phrases from a single page. I have a lot of success with title tags that say something like:
german shepard dogs german shepard puppies from...(whomever)
It's my belief, everything else being equal, a search engine will place an exact phrase match ahead of words out of sequence. I have had NO problems with structuring title tags this way. Of course there is a lot more to getting a top ranking than what I've outlined above.
One other note: If you're really in the dog biz with that breed, suggest you fix the spelling to: german shepherd. I spent a couple decades in very close contact with that breed, so you can believe that's the way to spell it.
In highly competitive categories, I generally avoid trying to wring more than two keyword phrases from a single page. I have a lot of success with title tags that say something like:
Actually, our MOST competitive keywords would be used in a G search maybe 150-200 times a day.
It's my belief, everything else being equal, a search engine will place an exact phrase match ahead of words out of sequence. I have had NO problems with structuring title tags this way. Of course there is a lot more to getting a top ranking than what I've outlined above.
That was my feeling as well, especially when my page would come up second or third behind a page that I has a higher PR than.
One other note: If you're really in the dog biz with that breed, suggest you fix the spelling to: german shepherd. I spent a couple decades in very close contact with that breed, so you can believe that's the way to spell it.
Actually (without being too specific), it is the software biz, but thanks :)
