Focus Keyword

[viatrading1]

Hi,

I have 2 doubts regarding keywords SEO optimization.

1. I would like to optimize the keyword "liquidation channel". The thing is, in my copy/page title/URL/etc it doesn't make a lot of sense to use this exact keyword, but rather "liquidation channels", in plural. Will I rank higher for liquidation channel anyway? And if so, to which extent? (e.g. about 70%...?)

2. I would like to optimize the homepage for the word "liquidation", but found out that some combinations using this keyword (like "liquidation sales" or "liquidation auctions") would have higher traffic and might work better for some pages. I understand I would still be ranking higher for the keyword liquidation, but to which extent? If it's 100% because the keyword is always included, does it makes sense to use 1-word keywords or should we always focus on multiple word keywords?

Would the same apply for 2-words keywords vs 3-words keywords, like "wholesale liquidation" SEO rankings being applied when optimizing "wholesale liquidation sales"?

Thank you,

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Hi Via Trading,

Difficult questions since you’re asking about a border situation  on one of all the  different ranking factors out there. About a year ago I found myself trying to dive this deep into specific ranking factors as well and I found a lot of conflicts with “best practices” for ranking factors and what would make the most sense for users. Beside these conflicts I found there is a lot of exact (percentages for example) information not available in the SEO community. Looking at your questions, I think nobody is willing to invest his time in setting up large scale tests to find out how these two are correlating.  Not because the question isn’t legit, but because there are bigger ranking factors that we don’t fully understand.

When you find yourself diving this deep into a ranking factor I advise you to stick to what does make the most sense for your visitors. This way you don’t do any over optimization and you can quickly switch investing your time in more important aspects of your website (content, promotion and just plain making your product awesome).

To help you further on your question I will try to give you some more information (and my view on this topic) about your question.

1. If it makes more sense to use “liquidation channels” I would go for that one since your page will probably be about multiple channels. If this is the case then just switching your URL won’t make your page content go about one channel, it would still have content about multiple channels on it. Search Engines do a great job at recognizing this so if you want to rank for ”liquidation channel” you should probably change the  context of your webpage as well to become the perfect match for search engines. That said, I think you a web page about multiple liquidation channels can be very helpful when I look for one. In my experience you can rank for both keywords with either of the URL’s. Here is a screenshot I just took about a situation like yours I have on our own website.

http://i.imgur.com/pkfdAz3.png

With the keywords “tattoo shop” and “tattoo shops” we found it harder to rank on the singular then on the plural but with both keywords we managed to get a #1 position (we didn’t specifically linkbuild on any of those terms). Just like you I through changing my URL would increase my chances to rank for the singular (since this keyword has the most traffic). So when we expanded our business to a new industry (driving schools / rijschool in dutch). We used the singular in the URL but still found us ranking better on the plural. My bet is that this is because our page is about multiple driving schools and not just one driving school. Besides that I think our backlinks help a little to push this result as well so it’s not 100 exact science.

Backlinks are an important factor to consider as well, if you change your page about a plural into a singular but your content is still about a plural you will find other websites using anchor texts with the plural instead of the singular. So in the end, you will still have a harder time with the singular then with the plural.

2. The quick answer (this comment is already getting way out of hand ), it won’t be the full 100% per cent since a general term like that often triggers some results as Wikipedia or other descriptive sources. You will definitely have a correlation with this term but don’t expect too much from it. Your best change to also score on this term with your homepage is to make sure your whole domain is about this subject. That would make you a better fit for a general term like this. In my opinion you should focus your homepage on a more specific term that does the best job to describe your website or main product or service.

I hope this helps!

[MattRoney]

I agree with Bob, and I want to add that one-word keywords tend to be _extremely_difficult to rank for. Your best bet is to focus your pages on the key phrases that make the most sense based on the topics of those pages.

Have you ever read Cyrus Shepard's "Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer's Guide to Smart Keyword Research?" It's a bit on the older side, but is still quite relevant. It might help you wrap your head around some of the intricacies of keyword targeting, and how search engines are learning to understand topics and intent.