How much can our page title, URL and alt-tag differ without negatively affecting SEO?

[CostumeD]

We are a bridal store selling wedding dresses and bridesmaids dresses. We are wanting to know how much our URL and page title can differ, whilst still optimising SEO.

For example, for the category Wedding Dresses, the URL contains wedding dresses, so can we use " the best wedding dresses in Sydney" in the page title?

For the bridesmaid dresses (URL is /bridesmaiddresses/) can we use " buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia"?

Can we use terms such as "buy best black dress in sydney", "buy online in australia" or "shop online in sydney" in the alt-tag, additional from the page title .i.e. adding extra keywords in the alt-tag that do not appear in the title? Would this be classified as keyword stuffing?

In our main categories .e.g. Wedding Dresses, can we add "best wedding dress store", "buy wedding dresses from best wedding store in sydney" in the alt-tag?

Thank you.

[ClaytonJ]

The short answer is that no-one 100% knows.

The better way to go about it, is to keep your eye on SEO, but build the website content for your customer. Make it relevant, exciting and clickable. On page title and url differences - there does not have to be a great amount of difference and in many cases they utilize the same keywords. You will get in more trouble repeating the same keywords, in the same formats. ie if your meta description had wedding dress in 3 or 4 times - that would look spammy and not be helpful.

Hope that assists.

[KaneJamison]

Going to respond to a couple points here, but the question of how many keywords can be safely targeted by a single page is a tricky one and has a lot of contributing factors.

For example, for the category Wedding Dresses, the URL contains wedding dresses, so can we use " the best wedding dresses in Sydney" in the page title?

The comprehensive approach would be to create a page for "best wedding dresses" featuring the most popular dresses and some unique copy, and separately create a page for "wedding dresses in Sydney, Australia" that is locally focused. These might even be separate from a category page focused on "wedding dresses", but it's harder to target head terms in that manner nowadays, since the search results will be unfavorable for an ecommerce category page.

For the bridesmaid dresses (URL is /bridesmaiddresses/) can we use " buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia"?

First off, use hyphens in your URLs like this: /bridesmaid-dresses/. It looks better for users, and historically is better for search engines which prefer to see hyphens when a space is intended.

Second, "buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia" isn't really a keyword that you would ever integrate on a page, because it's not a real statement, and is also unlikely to be a common search term. For a page like /bridesmaid-dresses/, I'd prefer to see a title tag like "The Best Bridesmaid Dresses For Sale in Australia - Brand Name", or perhaps "Bridesmaid Dresses For Sale - Free Shipping in Australia - Brand Name". It's going to look bad if you try to cram keyword variations for "best", "buy", "for sale", "online", and "in australia" into the same title tag, so I'd prefer to see you focus on the 2-3 most important keyword variants.

Can we use terms such as "buy best black dress in sydney", "buy online in australia" or "shop online in sydney" in the alt-tag, additional from the page title .i.e. adding extra keywords in the alt-tag that do not appear in the title? Would this be classified as keyword stuffing?

Yeah, you'll certainly want to include other keyword variations on the page - but the examples you're giving are probably pushing the limits of what you can get away with. Also - "buy online in australia" and "shop online in australia" are pretty meaningless. You'd be better off adding phrases like that to product/benefit/feature copy on the page instead of trying to hide it inside of Alt tags. Use Alt tags to actually describe what is contained in the image.

In our main categories .e.g. Wedding Dresses, can we add "best wedding dress store", "buy wedding dresses from best wedding store in sydney" in the alt-tag?

Quit trying to stuff phrases in the Alt tags. Figure out a way to include it in the page copy, or in the website's tagline in the header, or in the footer, or something else. Hiding it in the alt tags just looks shady if someone inspects the page.

Take a look at competitive shopping niches in America and look at what the top 4 people are doing. Those pages are probably the most aggressive approaches that you should consider for your own website.

Also read these posts:

• https://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts
• https://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization
• https://moz.com/blog/the-new-onpage-optimization-whiteboard-friday
• https://moz.com/blog/perfecting-onpage-optimization-for-ecommerce-websites