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Seems like it's getting indexed (site:domain.com). Possibly not getting ranked high, but definitely getting indexed.

Okay great, thank you!

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-8step-seo-strategy-step-1-define-your-target-audience-and-their-needs

Definitely manipulative. However, as others here have said, give Google some time. They are constantly refining their algorithm to identify these kinds of manipulations. Again, this is one of hundreds and thousands of techniques people use to manipulate their SERPS and with millions of websites on the web, Google wants to automatically identify these, not manually.

Hi RAIN Group, It sounds like you are referring to the data on the Keyword Difficulty tool. That tool is actually not connected to Google Analystics, but the search volume used to be provided through the Google AdWords API. Unfortunately, Google has removed our access to their AdWords API so we are no longer able to provide that data. The good news is, we don't actually use the Google AdWords data in our calculation of keyword difficulty; it's just supplemental data, so those reports are still 100% accurate - they're just missing the information we used to pull from the API, which you can get at https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool in the meantime. We are working on finding another source to partner with to provide search volume in the future, but I'm afraid we don't have an ETA for when that data will be available again directly through the tool. Thank you for your patience while we work on this! -Chiaryn

Hi, I assuming you are talking about the keyword tool found incorporated in Google Adwords, https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool  This, although an estimate, is the most accurate source of data of keyword search volumes. I have compared these values to impressions given for consistently ranking keywords in webmasters and they match up. Make sure when you run these searches in adwords, you have your desired country selected, and I would suggest selecting "exact match" instead of broad. The other thing to consider when examining this data is that the search results can be seasonal. The data provided is simply in the last month, so a trending topic (Oscar Pistorius) OR a seasonal one (Christmas Shopping) may not give the results you might think. Google Trends can help you realise this... Dan

Thanks. Can you give examples of a specific keyword and what could its broad matches be? Also: what is the relation between ranking well for a specific keyword and the resulting ranking for the related broad terms?

This is the point where SEO becomes as much art-form as science.  Creative implementation is the challenge you're talking about and there is no single "right" answer. I can tell you that in some niche's and some cities I have seen sites that go the spammy route penalized over time, though yes, it is still possible to get away with it in some situations. personally I don't encourage it because all that effort could not only be lost overnight, but recovery could then be more challenging afterward. Single Town approach: Minneapolis lawn care - 880 Minneapolis lawn service - 590 Minneapolis lawn mowing - 260 Page Title:  Minneapolis Lawn Care | Lawn Service Minneapolis H1 tag: Minneapolis Lawn Care & Mowing Service ("Minneapolis lawn mowing" being the third phrase you'd want to integrate) Minneapolis Snow Removal - 590 Minneapolis Snow Plowing - 320 Minneapolis Snow Removal services - 58 Page Title: Snow Removal Services Minneapolis | Snow Plowing H1 tag: Minneapolis Snow Removal & Plowing Services Multi-town approach: This is more challenging given the ability to only go so far to integrate phrase variations.  Just one consideration might be: Page Title: Minneapolis Lawn Care | Lawn Service | Lakeville | Apple Valley H1: Lawn Care & Mowing Service covering Minneapolis, Lakeville, Apple Valley & surrounding areas Page Title: Snow Removal Minneapolis | Snow Plowing | Lakeville | Apple Valley H1: Snow Removal & Plowing covering Minneapolis, Lakeville, Apple Valley & surrounding areas In both of these examples, I ensured to keep the Page Title within reasonable length for viewing in Google results, opting to cut out a 2nd tier word in exchange for additional town references. NOTE: I would not attempt to optimize more than that on any single page - that's the upper limit because it could get stupid, dilute SEO, and annoy prospective readers.

Any recommendations?  i would really like to start on some serious SEO and the first step would be for me to see what my competitors are doing.

Hi there! This is Megan from SEOmoz. The check marks refer to which URL is doing best in that column. If there are multiple URLs with the same score, then they will all have checks next to them. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

This is an excellent illustration Marisa. Very good description, and I totally agree on the modified broad match.

Thanks. Its a great idea - I will try it. However,  I am looking for a company which specializes in content creation. Someone I won't even have to tell them what to write about and that I can have fluent work done - I'm not sure this can be expected from bloggers.

You got to be kidding me! a thing like this exists! I am new to SeoMoz, earlier I was actually measuring all those metrics to measure competition and opposition factors and what not in SERPs, it used to take me ages to do the things i just did in few clicks a minute back... many thanks!

Hi Laura When I checked (and I've just checked again), the real time results show that the title tag is showing the company name.  If you, or another person have made these changes, they haven't been saved and effected the change. I've attached a screenshot of keyword analysis for that page - only showing critical and high factors.  You can see that it references the Title Tag in two areas as being unticked. The number 2 in your url will be fine and shouldn't cause you any issues at all.  As a starting point, your title tag and your images titles and alt tags should resolve it. You can then work at marketing that page etc. I would really recommend the moz toolbar, I don;t think I could live without it to be honest!  When you know what you are looking for, it tells you exactly what you need to know in an instant. electric-radiators.jpg

Also consider: how similar / relevant the term is for an existing page how many keywords you're attempting to optimise the existing page for how unique, awesome you can make the new page Good luck.

Having your own sandbox to screw around in is a great place to start, Jeff. It will let you begin to get a feel for some of the things that need to be taken into account as you build an SEO strategy for your site. But the difficulty is your new site will have very little traffic so it will be very hard to tell how much impact your changes and optimizations or actually having. Once you get to the point where you feel reasonably comfortable with the basics, and are pretty sure you can operate without creating major risk for the site you're working on, a great next step is to adopt a favorite local charity which has a website in need of assistance and optimization. Total win-win, as the website gets some help that is more experienced than what they can themselves provide, and you get the opportunity to work on a site that has enough traffic that you can start to see the actual effect of what you're doing. Obviously you are not getting paid for any of the work, so you can make it clear that their expectations should be in line with the fact that you are learning your way along in the process. But they are much more likely to allow you the opportunity than a commercial website that is depending on their site for their income and would be unwilling to trust a newbie with the keys. This approach helps address the standard conundrum in SEO: you shouldn't take on commercial clients until you have enough experience, but you can't get enough experience until you actually can take on some bigger websites. Paul

Actually, I believe that Google doesn't do local results for the query of web design.

The product page is http://www.cleanedison.com/courses/bpi-building-analyst and the homepage is http://www.cleanedison.com/ I wouldn't say the homepage is "going" for the same keywords as the product page. But like I said, the keywords "BPI Certification" and "BPI training" are the 2nd and 3rd (although distant) anchor texts for the homepage.

I've never come across any stats, but logic (well, my logic at least) and from everything I hear from anyone is that if anything, it's increasing. People are getting better and better at searching for specific things online. But... it's ultimately up to Google. Google may decide that your search query, "where to get a hawaiin pizza 24 hours a day in New York" is very specific but it's going to focus on shorter phrases like "24 hour pizza" in the search results.