Is it bad to optimize for tier one keywords only?

[regalatufoto]

Hello,

My site is about personalized cards, and I have optimized (rank A) each sample page to the main topic of the card (eg: sapo pepe). So when people search for that keyword (sapo pepe), my page ranks high.

Now, if instead of checking the optimization for "sapo pepe" I check for "cards sapo pepe" I get an F, because the keyword is not there. Thing is that people search for different tier 2 keywords, like "cards, models, examples, etc" and I cannot put that many keywords in the page...

My question is: does Search Engines rank you high if you optimize your page  for a subset of the keywords people search for? I understand that if someone optimizes for "cards sapo pepe" they would get higher than my site.

Hope I was clear, any comment is appreciated!

Thanks,

MAriano

[EGOL]

and I cannot put that many keywords in the page...

I don't know why this is the case but if I was in your situation I would either fix it or change my philosophy about what can be displayed on a page.

I understand that if someone optimizes for "cards sapo pepe" they would get higher than my site.

if you don't have the word "cards" on your page or in link anchor text that hits your page then you page will not be relevant.

My question is: does Search Engines rank you high if you optimize your page  for a subset of the keywords people search for?

Yes, but only if you deserve it.   You will not rank high for "cards Mickey Mantle" unless you have a strong site or a number of good links

[regalatufoto]

and I cannot put that many keywords in the page...

I don't know why this is the case but if I was in your situation I would either fix it or change my philosophy about what can be displayed on a page.

[MB] At least in spanish, people use different terms looking for the same thing: examples, cards, models, photocards, etc... (... plus Mickey)  If I have to put ALL those keywords in a relevant way on my page, then it would become really ugly to read (I try to write for humans, not for SEs) Hence my question... I've chosen one, but for what I have seen, people sometimes don't even use those tier 2 keywords, they just browse for images of Mickey... so that is why I just optimized for the tier 1 keywords.

I understand that if someone optimizes for "cards sapo pepe" they would get higher than my site.

if you don't have the word "cards" on your page or in link anchor text that hits your page then you page will not be relevant.

[MB] I do have "cards", but I don't have many others (synonyms or similar words), that is why they rank low on them. I've chosen to do so, but I do not know if it was the right thing.

My question is: does Search Engines rank you high if you optimize your page  for a subset of the keywords people search for?

Yes, but only if you deserve it.   You will not rank high for "cards Mickey Mantle" unless you have a strong site or a number of good links

[MB] My site is small and new, I think I built it to show the content properly, but now I need to make it show up in search... Probably my biggest challenge is to find the proper tier 2 keywords to make it more relevant.

Thanks, your answers are helpful and inline with my ideas.

Best,

[EGOL]

Thanks for the details.  I understand your problem better now.

I have a site that sells a product that has a formal name, a slang name, an archaic name and an ignorant name.   Something like photographs, photos, pictures, pics.   Google understands that my site is about all of these  - and even related words such as "images".

When my site was new and weak I had to create special pages in a historical context or slang context to get optimal rankings for those words.  As my site grew more powerful the primary pages began to rank well for all of the word variants.

[regalatufoto]

**When my site was new and weak I had to create special pages in a historical context or slang context to get optimal rankings for those words.  As my site grew more powerful the primary pages began to rank well for all of the word variants. **

Great, my problem is that I would need to create pages for each combination of tier 1 and tier 2 keywords (Mickey pics, Mickey pictures, Mickey photos, Donald pics, Donald pictures, etc)... is that what you did?

Thanks!!!

[EGOL]

I made two pages for each product.

One was highly optimized for the slang name (highest search volume) and lightly optimized for the formal name.  The second was highly optimized for the historical name and lightly for the ignorant.

That was a few years ago.  Once my site became dominant in the SERPs for all of these terms (for a wide variety of products) I merged the two pages of content and now have just one page highly optimized for the slang name with mentions of historic, ignorant and formal.

I think that google is getting better at associating the usage of these words and today google often changes my title tag to match the query.

[Getz.pro]

I think I built it to show the content properly, but now I need to make it show up in search..

That right there is the key to this thread. You need to first find which keywords are being searched via Google Keyword Tool, then optimize your site for perhaps two of these top terms.

A good place to put those other keywords would be image names and images description copy (if you put copy below the image to describe it). So instead of just Mickey-Cards.jpg you would replace cards with alternate keyword. Image names are not real high on Google's list, but it will help to build out a broader keyword list without messing up the flow of your page. Also, now looking at your site, you have images with item numbers below that. Would it be too much to add some text below the image and above the item number. Smaller font, not bold, but italic?

Also, no-follow links (twitter, facebook, etc) are a good place to put alternate keywords. They don't pass juice, but are still counted as referrals. Use this same logic when building all your links. Very important links use your tier 1 keyword, lesser links, use alternative keywords.

[regalatufoto]

Thanks,

Now that you mentioned the keyword tool, I did research that and the number of searches for the tier1 keyword only is 10x, 20x, or more the number of searches for the Tier1+Tier2 keywords

I DO want a uniform criteria for my pages, so thinking it twice now... and making a consious decision, I should optimize for Tier1 only and make slight mentions to the other keywords, betting that they will become visible when needed.

[regalatufoto]

Hate to ask this but: did you repeat content in the second page? how you manage to do that?

I am asking because I cannot create custom content for every page, it's a catalog with 400+ models... In my case I would have to duplicate the whole catalog... without adding too much valuable content...

Thanks for the response.

[EGOL]

When the pairs of pages were first built we simply replaced WordA with WordB.  Then ran into a duplicate content problem - lots of pages were being filtered from the search results.  We then wrote unique for all pages.

[regalatufoto]

There you see, that's my concern... I do not want that...

ok thanks, makes sense to tune my pages just a bit to include at least one mention to each keyword and make sure I grow my ranks...

Thanks a lot both you for the ideas and experience.