Question about creating content pages for keywords

[harshal.khatavkar]

Good morning,

We are trying to rank our India based company which provides the following services
Engineering Design Services
Architectural Design Services
MEP Design Services

Our target audiences are in the US and UK.

Offcource, we are targetting above services keywords on most of our main pages and created dedicated services pages too. But lately, we found out that we are ranking well for keywords like Outsourcing Engineering Design Services, Outsourcing Architectural Design Services, etc... which are actually very very good keywords in terms of closing the leads/inquiries as people are actually looking out for outsourcing but the search count for those keywords is low. (though we closed 2 inquiries from those keywords). These pages we created in past just to increase the content of the website.

I really want to give it a try to target those keywords by creating more pages, blog posts, backlinks, etc...

My question is if we create more and more pages around those keywords then will it affect the rankings of the pages which are already ranking for those keywords or will the new pages compete against those pages or the new pages will help to boost current pages?

We can write good content and blog posts on the outsourcing topic but not sure if we should create new pages or increase the length of the existing pages.

Can you guys please help with some directions on this as I really don't want to take the wrong route.

Look forward!

Regards

[Seenlyst]

Hello there,

You should do both, update your current content to make it more insightful, as well as creating more page with content targeting more keywords or other longer tail keywords.

I'm guessing you are worried about "keyword cannibalization," there's some excellent article about this on Moz's blog which can help you to learn how to avoid and identify them if they happen.

https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-keep-keyword-cannibalism-from-robbing-your-sites-performance

https://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/keyword-cannibalization-and-how-to-handle-it/8084/

https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-cannibalization/

To be honest, I wouldn't worry too much about this.

Hope this helps,

Joseph Yap

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Harshal

I have a lot of experience working with sites that have become bloated with blog posts which cannibalise internal content. They say, 'we used to rank well for xxx keyword, but for some reason, it's all fallen off a cliff. Well, the answer is invariably that they have published content which duplicates the theme/intent of the main money page.

If you have a page which is doing well for 'Outsourcing Engineering Design Services' then beef up that page rather than adding more posts which cover the same topic.

Stick to one page-one theme and you will not go wrong. By adding additional content to this page including images and possibly self-hosted or CDN hosted video you will see the [age gradually increase in rank.

Make sure that the title tag is concise following - Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Company Name and that the on page is strong with H1, Image Alts and semantically connected contextually written content which is separated by H2 If you do this and don't use copied content or start writing blog posts which cover the same theme then you will shine! If you have related themes which have their own pages then cross-link to this one using a variety of semantically connected anchor texts.

Best Regards

Nigel

[harshal.khatavkar]

Thanks for the links Joseph. I will go through them.

[harshal.khatavkar]

Great Nigel for the tips,
So basically I should

1. Make the page more user-friendly
2. Add in images to the page
3. Create a single blog post which will link to this page
4. Get an interlink from home page to this page
5. Create 2-3 guest posts on other website and link to this page
6. Try and create a video on youtube and embed it on this page
7. Put more efforts on on-page on SEO for this page

Do you think I am missing anything in the strategy?

Thanks again.

Regards,

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Harshal

Let me be a bit clearer

1) Make the page more user-friendly

Enhance the page to best serve user intent. Add semantically related keywords eg engineering/engineer - services/resources/service. Ensure content is nicely structured with H1 having the primary keyword or semantic and sections separated by H2s

2) Add in images to the page

Yes - a primary or feature image with the alt text the same as the primary keyword. Other images surrounding the keyword will also help.

3) Create a single blog post which will link to this page

Not necessarily but if you do write blog posts around the subject, don't duplicate this page title. If you must mention engineering services then link back to this page

4) Get an interlink from home page to this page

Yes of course, but I assume this would be in the menu anyway? Also interlink from other service pages back to this with varying semantically related keywords. Check out our 'Service for Outsourcing engineering design'

5) Create 2-3 guest posts on other website and link to this page

Be very careful doing this. Make sure that the site you are writing for is related to your industry and make sure you are not reciprocal or 3 way linking. If it's an engineering website with a good Domain Authority (DA) and is not spammy then OK. Place links carefully and use varying semantically connected keywords/phrases

6) Try and create a video on youtube and embed it on this page

If you place a video on Youtube then the Youtube page will come up first. Better to use Wistia (4 free ones) or another content delivery network (CDN) to host your videos. Videos will increase dwell time and bounce rate - people will spend longer on the page which is great for SEO.

7) Put more efforts on on-page on SEO for this page

For sure but don't keyword stuff! Make the page easy to read as I have this post!

I hope that helps, regards Nigel

[harshal.khatavkar]

Hi Nigel, thank you very much for all your detailed suggestions and with examples I will follow these and update the results over the period of time so it may help others.

Thanks again!

Cheers

[Seenlyst]

Glad it help