Changing keyword on existing page for better CTR?

[Jakob]

Hi everybody,

I'm a danish illustrator and wanted to optimize my different pages to hit the right keywords of course. On a page I decided to aim for one keyword and I ended up on google page 3 which really bothers me. But I found out that I went on page 1 with the same page but for the other keyword. The one that I initially discarded but I putted it into the text to make sure.

So what shall I do? My page rank approximately 8 (on page 1) for the other keyword. Shall I change keyword and go for the second keyword?

Or shall I keep on building backlinks for the page I've made with keyword one? And will that also give me a better position for keyword 2?

How will a page be affected with a sudden keyword change? I need expertise since I'm new in SEO and I face new challenges all the time.

Bonus info: Keyword one has only a little more searches per month - but approximately twice as high CPC than keyword 2.

Looking forward to hear from you guys!

All the best,

Jakob

[RedBar]

Hi Jakob

I'm a bit confused as to what you have done and are trying to do!

You have illustration example 1, named illustration example1.jpg / png?

Your header title is illustration 1 | your name?

Your meta description is illustration1 plus description?

Your on-page description is illustration 1 plus information?

What are the other keywords you are now using, are they related to illustration 1 or not?

Or is this not how you are doing things?

[not2easy]

Be careful of putting too much work into trying to sculpt one aspect of measurement. Increase in CTR may also increase 'Bounce' if the UX is not what visitors expected to find.

Don't work toward other people's goals. Once you have made sure that your site is in good shape technically, then work on making visitors happy and your SEO will be improved. Write accurate and creative descriptions of your images. If you are not running an ad campaign you don't need to concentrate on keywords.

[Jakob]

Thank you guys,

explanation: The keyword I chose to rank for was 'drawer illustrator' (well in danish- my target is the danish market). I putted this in title, meta data, URL and on page descrition. I discarded keyword 'professional illustrator'.

But I ended up ranking 8 for 'professional illustrator' and approximately 30 for 'drawer illustrator'....

What to do now?

Change keyword on excisting page? Make new page for 'professional illustrator' or leave as it is and continue building backlinks?

Thank you for paying attention RedBar and Not2Easy!

/ Jakob

[not2easy]

You can mention either or both words - or neither - if it is natural. There are no 'rules' about 'keywords' though there are lots of services related to trying to impress the importance of them. Work on letting visitors know who you are and what you do, but descriptions should be related to your work that is shown if you are using your images. Stressing on which term to use and where to put it is not the best use of your time. A separate page about the nature of your work, your tools, your experience is where you can use any terms that you believe people might be using to find your services. They won't appreciate searching for someone to hire and finding only images with the terms they used.

Make sure your site works as expected, make sure your message is clear, cover details where needed and don't keep manipulating content. Good luck.

[RedBar]

Is your domain name under your personal name, business name or a keyword domain name? .com or .dk?

Each requires a slightly different approach in my experience and whichever you use try not to mix them about.

Do I assume it is in English and your target market is global?

[Jakob]

My domain name is a business name.

It's a .com but the target market is danish.

<snip>
(No links, please)

[edited by: not2easy at 4:46 pm (utc) on May 20, 2020]
[edit reason] Please see ToS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[lucy24]

Oh. That kind of drawer. I was thinking “skuff” (or however you spell it in Danish), like you were producing technical illustrations or production drawings for carpenters.

Unless people habitually put their search terms in "quotation marks", you can expect the search engine to throw in synonyms and variants ad lib. whenever the search is in a language it knows. Are you trying to reach people who are specifically looking for pencil drawings as opposed to, say, paintings or computer graphics or mechanical illustration?

[edited by: not2easy at 4:47 pm (utc) on May 20, 2020]
[edit reason] update [/edit]

[NickMNS]

@Jakob
What you describe is a great example of the fact that the concept of keyword is dead.

You put a some "keyword" on your page and then magically Google sends more traffic from another "keyword".

Sure change your keyword, it shouldn't make any difference per se. Google interprets the meaning and relevance of your page based on a wide array of factors, and then matches that to an even wider array of queries, what those queries are or will be is not easy or even possible to determine.

How are you determining your "keyword" position, Google Search Console or 3rd party tool? GSC rarely reports keyword data, thus the keywords that you do see are only a small portion of all the keywords that are driving traffic. A similar logic holds for 3rd party tools, you are only looking for rankings for the keywords that you think are driving traffic, what about the infinite other variations? 3rd party tools are a useless waste of money.

Also, searches change over time, one week many people may search with one variation, the next another and how Google ranks you as a result of those changes will change as well. There is really no way that you can modify your page to have Google send more or less traffic from one keyword or another. Yes you can modify a page, but the outcome of that modification will likely have more to do with randomness that the actual modification itself.

The bottom line is that you need to create the page for your customers and potential customers, because as other have pointed out, once a user arrives on the page you want that user to stay and ultimately convert. Humans will quickly see that you are more focused on pleasing a bot that actual humans and then those paying customers will bounce.

If you really want to be sure that Google knows exactly what you are about, you should implement schema markup. You may also want look a having a Google business listing of you haven't already done it.

Final notes, given that your page display images of your art work, be sure to have hotlink protection to prevent spam sites from showing you work. If you are serious about "I serve not just Copenhagen but the whole world" then you may want to consider an English version of you page.

Nice art work!

[RedBar]

My domain name is a business name.

It's a .com but the target market is danish.

Dang, I missed the link!

The most visited page on most websites is the index / home page therefore you need to ensure that this is very accurate and descriptive regarding your work and preferably with some good on-page internal links with images to great example pages, therefore your titlebar needs to be good, nope, excellent, consider it carefully along with the meta description ... this must be created carefully, not just any old random words, be very accurate and articulate. This will most probably be your lead-in page for most visitors, this is what they will see briefly in the G.dk SERPs where they decide to click and visit, or not.

Illustrated pages need to be done in a similar manner and whatever you do, do not rush this, create yourself a standard page template layout so that the visitor knows what to expect on each page and where to find it and by using a standard layout you can change things much easier if you need to.

Lastly, insofar as G English pages are concerned, do not expect changes immediately, I find major updates can take anywhere between 2-4 months to take hold ... Is G.dk any different?

[Jakob]

@ Lucy24 Yep I'm trying to reach people by showing them analog illustration.

@ NickMNS - great feedback and thank you for the nice comment regarding my artwork. Okay then schema mark up and content for the users. I'm getting there but I can improve. Though I also get a little confused with your comment - do you think SEO is dead or unreliable? (I'm using various third party software to analyze my site.... Ubersuggest, Ahrefs.com, Analytics, Search Console....)

@ RedBar Great feedback. I will take your advices in when designing my site. I find that I easy get into the SERP with new pages for Google.dk - but for most times slightly bad positions. Approximately googles third page. I'm freakin impatient and my buisness rely on exposure. I started in January and hope all my work will give me results the forthcoming months.

@ ALL OF YOU - any other advices how to create a site that goes high on google? All tipsare welcome. Whats your views on backlinks for example?

[not2easy]

For the kind of product/service you offer, word of mouth beats arranged backlinks any day. All backlinks are not created equal and the best ones come from your customers. There is nothing wrong with asking your customers to help your business grow with a mention on their site. Those kinds of links are worth 10 times (or more what you can arrange yourself on sites that are only loosely related. Unrelated sites? Don't bother. It should aim to be a network of people who think you do great work.

Before you go too far with your off-page seo, check your site inside and out for weak spots and errors because those can bite you. I always suggest that people get a validation report from w3.org - they set the standards and offer a free report so you can clean up messy or erroneous code. Validation does not need to be the goal, those reports can save you time and user unhappiness in the long run. They tell you what they find, why it is not right and how to fix it. Browsers are very forgiving but getting it right makes that far less of a concern.

HTML Validator: [validator.w3.org...]
CSS Validator: [jigsaw.w3.org...]

Moving up in Google can take time, it can help to see what those ahead of you are doing differently. I don't mean to copy others but to see what is there and how it is different from your site. Google doesn't like manipulative efforts and won't generally reward them in the long run so build for your visitors, try to give them your best efforts. ;)

[Jakob]

@ Not2easy Great feedback once again! It's mega valuable to get feedback from different sources.

Thank you!

[tangor]

Since the site is based on illustrations, keep that factor in mind when attempting any "keyword seo" ... your visitor/ranking may be different for each different illustration!

If the site is only five months old and you are already holding a steady rank at page three, I suggest being a bit more patient, put up MORE CONTENT, write good descriptions, and don't do something stupid like trying to game back links!

My experience is 1-2 years to develop enough user base, even it they are only one time visitors, to really see any directions in user intent.

MEANWHILE, pay attention to your raw logs and battle the bots EARLY and OFTEN to help prevent scraping of your site and having it duplicated around the world. Identify those bad actors early and you can hold on to what you have for a lot longer than if you ignore it until too late.

[tangor]

Oh, one last thought:

If there were any magic keywords, they'd already be taken. :)

It is the CONTENT and INTENT that really gets ranked these days.

[Jakob]

@ Tangor. Thank you for helping. I really appreciate it.

It makes all whole lot of sense. I'm glad you took time for the post. Good day.

Jakob