How to Best Target Two Keyword Phrases for a Business Directory

[ErnieB]

Our client has medical centers all over the US and we rank really well for the term "DIALYSIS CENTER" as well as all the major markets "DIALYSIS CENTER LOS ANGELES", etc.

We need to add in a Second Keyword Phrase of "CKD CENTER" (which is an alternate term for the same medical center).

Should we change all the TITLE, H1, etc that we have done to a COMBINED term of "CKD DIALYSIS CENTER" or "DIALYSIS CKD CENTER" and all the local market variations?  We can't create 2 pages for one business in the directory, but we're not sure the right way to make sure that the pages are now targeted for 2 terms.

Thanks in advance for any help & advice!!!!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ernieb,

Does your keyword research indicate that 'CKD center' is a term or equal value to 'Dialysis center'. Taking just a quick look at Google's keyword planner, it doesn't seem to be, but I'm sure you've done in-depth research on this and have better data than I do from a quick glance. 'CKD center' does not exist as a category in the Google Places for Business category taxonomy, so you can't optimize your listing for this, at least as a category, though you could mention in in your business description. You'd have to see if it exists as a category in any of the other citation sources, but it might not.

Right now, you are ranking highly for what may be your core phrase 'dialysis center city'. If you decide to re-optimize core pages of the website to reflect not one but two terms, then there is a chance that this will split your authority and result in a loss of rankings for the initial phrase, because you are now telling Google that you want all of your authority to go towards ranking two phrases instead of one. I'm not saying that this will definitely happen, because I can't judge this without knowing how authoritative the website is. It may be that the site's Domain Authority is so high, it could stand this without any drop in rankings for the initial phrase. It's just hard to judge something like that from a generic standpoint.

You may need to create new content to reflect this second phrase, add the new keyword to some of the existent pages, earn links that reflect the new keyword and edit the description area of your citations to include this new keyword. Other efforts like Social Media activity or Video Marketing could also help you to start gaining some quicker visibility for this phrase. And, of course, there is PPC. If you need to rank for this new term quickly, you can pay to do so while you are working to build up organic visibility for the new phrase.

Does this help?

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Miriam nailed it.  Great response.

[MiriamEllis]

Thank you, Kurt!

[ErnieB]

Yes, I think it does.  We were hoping that we could just modify all the TITLES to:

"Dialysis Center & CKD Center Los Angeles"

to include the new keyword CKD Center.  Or maybe just do:

"CKD Dialysis Center Los Angeles"

and hope that Google will rank us for both CKD Center Los Angeles and Dialysis Center Los Angeles.