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Just to be clear, here we are talking about URLs and not the domain name because when it comes to domain name my personal advice is not to go fir hyphens as this is not a common practice plus its usually a practice of spammers to use shady domain names. As far as URLs are concern it’s a wonderful idea as Lina said they are better than underscores. Hope this helps!

well said

Thank you Tim, Your response certainly makes much sense and I have noted it in my strategy for this clients. Much appreciated! Meaghan

Trung beat me to it but +1 to keywordtool.io, an often overlooked thing is to ask your users how they would find a solution to their issue - with a tool like seed keywords - http://seedkeywords.com/. We have recently had success with looking at the old pre-not provided data for long tail queries, the data is fresh enough that it might open your eyes a bit to new opps and a lot of people aren't doing that.  One of our peeps Amanda might be publishing something soon about this, it helped us build / refresh content better than if we had used other tools.

If you are looking for a more permanent option, use this tool: http://www.advancedwebranking.com/ This rank checker allows you to enter in your own keywords that you want to display the rank of. Better yet, it uses proxy servers so the results dont count against you. Only thing I would mention is to not run the report more often then once every two weeks, as this will make your impression count go way up. Here is a link to a site we set up a long time ago:  http://www.woodlandwindows.com/awr/ All the keyword choices showing up were ones that we chose. The front page listings show up in bold, so it's easy to see what is ranking, and what isn't. You don't have to have that large of a list. Also, if you are trying to use a free platform to help, Google analytics can show you your top visited pages, which more than likely has a direct effect on your topp ranking pages. When you link your webmaster account and analytics accounts together, you can view search query and keyword ranking info.

Thanks team!

Hi guys, have a client in a similar situation and working through best option for them...would appreciate any comments or feedback... Current Status - client has two websites each targeting different countries: .co.nz and .com.au With the exception of a few products that are offered separately between NZ and AU, the sites are the same. In essence duplicate content. This is due to current platform limitations (the way their web company has built the site it is same site showing in each region on separate domains with option to change products between regions using inventory an integrated inventory tool). The great news is they are currently rebuilding their websites onto a new platform with two unique versions of the site…which will be great for ongoing SEO - ie we can really drill into creating separate sets of page, product, template content and meta data etc. They also have a magazine running on Word Press Blog using sub-domains associated with the regional root domain. E.g. magazine.domain.co.nz and magazine.domainname.com.au Again, with a few exceptions, this is also duplicated for both countries…ie sub domains assigned to the same site. Again duplicate content. Question: The magazine being built on Word Press has to date been geared at offering an “FAQ” type engagement with visitors....visitors can submit questions via module which are then answered in Word Press blog posts. There are also links from main site menu away to the magazine...so not ideal for conversion. Client wants to bring this FAQ type feature back to the two main sites and can now do so during new site rebuilds. There is also some SEO juice in the magazine as in essence it is a large Word Press blog. I am trying to work through what would be the best option for transferring all of the FAQ answers/articles (content) from magazine FAQs to the two new main sites...so over time the two new main sites obtain that SEO strength. Option 1 Leave magazine as it is so that main sites continue to get benefits of referral traffic to main sites and sales as result of the referrals. Also retains the links from magazine to main site (although links are from a sub-domain of the same domain) Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new NZ site Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new AU site (Bearing in mind stringent Panda rules etc – mixing up titles so unique, unique content and posting etc to avoid Panda penalties) Option 2 Take down magazine site and implement 301 redirects + one new version of the articles. Move all magazine articles across to the highest performing region (NZ by far) and 301 redirect from NZ magazine to the new NZ site with corresponding articles. 301 redirects take care of the indexed pages to retain traffic and rankings for the NZ magazine articles. Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article and add to the new AU site and 301 redirect from AU magazine articles to the new version on AU site. 301 redirects take care of any indexed AU magazine articles...but there may be some fluctuation in rankings as the content is now completely different (brand new). Could there be any issue with loss of the internal backlinks? impacts SEO strength that magazine subdomain to main site might give? Other Options? Appreciate any thoughts or comments... thanks in advance...

If you can give us some context as to where you've seen it used, we can help better explain what it means in that case. It could actually mean a lot of different things.

Yeah, I'd really tackle this error first, as the other one could be a false alarm. It sounds like you've got multiple canonical tags on a single page, which Google can't interpret very well (and that might just ignore it or use the wrong one). This often indicates that your CMS is double-placing tags and could signal broader problems.

Well first thing is to ask yourself these questions Who is my target audience? (Marketing 101 but it's amazing how many people skip this) What am I relevant to? (How relevant is your site content within industry or niche?) What problems am I trying to solve? (Every search query generated is someone looking for a solution to a problem) Does my site require localization? (if the site has any relevance to location that will play a big part in your Optimization strategy) What are my goals and KPI's? (Knowing what the "R" is in "ROI" for you site and or campaign is essential to planning for it's success.) Who are my Organic competitors? What are they targeting? (Knowing the competitive landscape in and out will give you a clear indication of routes currently explored my others in your space and will help you determine you KW path) Who are my Paid competitors? What are they targeting? (Don't forget to research the paid media targets & spend of your competitors. PPC will give you great insights into high converting terms and will provide you with a great snapshot of you competitors mindsets when placed side by side their organic plans.) And last but not least, Who do I want to rank for and where? (Here is the question that every optimization guru needs to ask themselves when trying to "rank". Searches are tailored now to an individual and results can and will be scewed by a searchers location,social interactions,search history and more. So understanding the who, what, why and where is essential to your long term sustainability and ultimate success) Finally let say that while keywords are still a relevant piece of planning your campaign and should get some focused attention, they are losing relevance by the minute as Google has gone almost completely to not provided now anyway. Also you don't want to get into the habit of having your reporting be Keyword focused. Start researching new and exciting metrics that can show real return. SEO's trying to hold onto reporting heavily on Keywords will be out a job soon. So focus should be put into planning a relevant, valuable, content rich website that takes it's intended audience on a specific journey resulting in whatever your "R" is. Focus on your audience and being hyper relevant with solid best practices and you will be fine.

Thanks very much Paul.. Very helpful!

Thanks for that David, it def helped. Awesome!

Thank you Joel!