Advice - Keywords, good semantic practice...

[well-its-1-louder]

Hi everyone,

I'm still new to SEO so bear with me.

I'm fairly ok with what determines good 'On page optimization' grading. Have a few good results but mostly for my ecommerce website. Now I'm building up blog content I'm often puzzled how SEO experts balance good editorial web page titles with how people actually search. An example:

Buy Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses

I have created the page title 'Buy Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses - Company'

Created a

and

tag with the same keywords... drop the term a few times on the page, add to a few alt tags, add the term to the url.... but this looks contrived & isn't exactly an exciting web page title which would entice people to click through. Or is it?

A more interesting web page title might be something like 'Versace & Biggie Smalls - his influence on a new generation of Hip Hop culture'. Ok this is a completely different long-tail keyword phrase. But do I need to do both?

How would a seasoned SEO expert blend the dull search term into some interesting page title and hence all other on page optimization aspects.

Hope you get what I'm trying to explain.

Thanks for looking...

Kevin

[Everett]

Hello Kevin,

Just by asking this question you exhibit way more intuitive knowledge than many seasoned SEOs out there.

First you need to think about the intent of the searcher. Do they want to read about Biggie's influence on hip hop, or do they want to buy a pair of Biggie Smalls Versace sunglasses? Being an ecommerce site, I'd go with the latter.

Second, you need to think about scaleability. It is great to customize every title tag and meta description completely, but that isn't always scaleable across several thousand products.

Some other tips:

I always liked adding in offers and unique selling propositions on key products. The offers might be temporary and subject to change, which is why you need to keep it scaleable. The last thing you want is an angry shopper who saw an offer in the SERPs that is no longer available on the site. This might only be your top 10-50 products out of thousands, but typically those represent the majority share of revenue on most ecommerce sites anyway. Some examples:

Buy Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses - Free Shipping from Company!

Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses: Save 10% with Company!

Authentic Biggie Smalls Sunglasses from Versace - Save at Website.com!

You get the point. These titles are obviously written for shoppers. They are at the point of the buying cycle where they know exactly what they want and are just looking for a good deal from a trusted, reliable store.

If you're targeting someone earlier in the buying cycle who wants Versace sun glasses but do not yet know which kind, they should end up on a category page.

If you're targeting a Biggie Smalls fan who doesn't even know they "want" a pair of sunglasses yet, well that's an entirely different type of landing page and marketing activity. Conversion rates from the SERPs for that target market would be dismally low on a product detail page. An article about Biggie Smalls would be more appropriate. Something specifically dealing with the phenomenon of merchandising around the name of a deceased artist might be particularly appealing and link-worthy.

Good luck!

[Bryan_Loconto]

I would start with keyword research to find which one of these terms has traffic and how competitive they are.

A)Google Adwords keyword tool (set to [exact]) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QBslJx6psIs

B)then use SEOmoz's keyword difficulty yool to determine how competative the terms are "organically" http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty

If you still want to go for both terms you can build two pages and optimize both pages, build links to them, and most importantly outreach/social media.

[well-its-1-louder]

Hi Everett,

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive reply, it's really helped especially how honing in on the purpose dictates strategy, easy to overlook.

As you say I have an eCommerce site so getting people to buy is really my purpose, hopefully with added interesting articles along the way.

I like your idea of adding Free Shipping, which we do but don't advertise in SERPs, very helpful.

It's slowly dawning on me that I can with a bit of thought incorporate popular keywords into titles. Maybe the keywords aren't always the 1st 3 words in the the title, but hey you can't have everything.

You really given me some food for thought, thank you!

Kevin

[well-its-1-louder]

Thanks Bryan,

I like your idea of multiple pages, although a bit of workload.

Do you have any ideas how you go about doing this with Wordpress. I understand duplicate pages are a no no for SEO, canonicalization is the answer but how to implement with Wordpress. Also how to stop the duplicate post appearing in my Wordpress???

Kevin