1 page 2 keywords?

[VasilTasev]

Hello folks,

I have a problem with optimizing a page for 2 different keywords. Here is the situation:

On-page: Both keywords in title; both words in body text (I didn't count them but approximately 3-4 times for 100 words in total)

Off-page: Exact anchor text from article directories, Synonym & Brand anchors from directories. My link building shcedule is as inconsistent as possible. I just keep around 50 links per week. I do social sharing, guest blogging with exact/synonym anchor text links and also I link to other pages across the whole site. I try to avoid site bar and footer links although I have some because it's partner links, I didn't buy them. I even asked web masters to put nofollow tag to those link after the drop because I was concerned that Penguin considers them bought links.

The result: 1st keyword is going quite well, it reached 5th postion but after that dropped to the second page, which more or less I can explain with various factors such as overal keyword competition, maybe penguin thought that some links are spammy.

The problem is that the second keyword is disaster. I found it in SERP after 1 month hard work on 17th page and now it is swinging between 14th and 17th page. Honestly, I am confused. Is it possible that link building with 2 keywords to the same page creates self canibalization of some kind?

Just to remind that the 2 keywords are quite different, i,e. there are not related as synonyms or similar. Do you guys have had similar problem?

Thanks in advance for your advice

[SaforwebDesign]

Have you take a look to "Keyword Difficulty" tool of SEOmoz?? Maybe these words are more difficult to rank. Can you give us more information??

[bronxpad]

There are some basics to look at. How are your Title tags? Google gives more relevance to your first keyword in your title tag. Example: Local Real Estate / Local Homes for sale . In this case google will give more weight to the local Real Estate keyword than the second.

That is why most SEO pro's will recommend to focus on one keyword per page. That does mean you would need two great pages and to link build for both. Hard work yes but in the long term will benefit you.

Otherwise you will need to make sure that one page is optimized for both keywords and your link building efforts focuses on both keywords.

• Google frowns on buying links so don't do it
• Google doesn't like spamming sites for links
• They also don't like link exchanges.
• Keywords above the fold are important also

Hope this helps

[BenFox]

Is the second keyword less related to the overall theme of your site?

If your site is selling "chocolate mousse" and the second keyword is "anaphalctic shock" then I wouldn't be surprised if you were struggling to rank. That's an extreme example but you get the point?

[josh-riley]

I agree with everyone, and keep in mind that exact keyword anchor text can look spammy. So, aside from just the links, shake up the anchor text so it also doesn't look  as spammy. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172839/Google-Penguin-Update-Impact-of-Anchor-Text-Diversity-Link-Relevancy

[VasilTasev]

Hi both keywords are highly competitive. The 1st keyword is 60% and the second is 69% (the second keyword is the one I am having problems with).

There are pages above my page in SERP for my second keyword with significantly lower links profile.

[VasilTasev]

Thanks for the advice, the strange thing is that the better performing word is on the second place in title. Also I have noticed a competitor which ranks well for 2 similar (also competitive) keywords and has 0 times the first word in body text!!! Just both keywords in title. This competitor has 3 times (on average) more linking domains and links than my site and is on the second page, while I am struggling between 14th and 17th..

[VasilTasev]

I thought the same, but actually this keyword is even more relevant to the domain than the 1st keyword.

Both keywords are relevant to the page and to the domain as a whole BUT the keywords are not so closely relevant to each other.

[VasilTasev]

Thanks Andrea, that is already done, I use lots of different anchors and lots of different pages to link to.