Google’s Hummingbird and Keyword Cannibalization
-
My client wants to have keywords added on every product with the product name , apparently some seo guru told him that hummingbird is all about key phrases and long tail keywords.
As i know hummingbird lends to understand the intent and contextual meaning of the query.
The issue is if I add the keywords on for e.g oak furniture on all of my product title,And we are using zen-cart platform and it will change the internal anchor text on the product listing page. It will cause a Cannibalization issue.
Question1. I just need help to reply to client that adding keyword can cause detrimental to ranking.
Question 2. If i am wrong then do we need to re optimise the site.
I have read http://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization
Many thanks.
-
Tell your client he is on the right track with wanting to target long tail keywords (that will make his ego feel better) but that it's not so simple as adding one keyword to all the pages. After you choose which page to rank for "oak furniture" (my guess would be the home page or main oak furniture page), choose which long tail phrases containing oak furniture you want to rank for, then choose pages (if different from the main oak furniture page) that would be a good fit. For example, you may have different pages for "discount oak furniture" vs. "taking care of your oak furniture." Do the same with other variations like oak table, oak chair, etc. I would recommend doing this keyword research first and then taking that to the client with a plan of action.
If this is too manual, try using your existing product browsing categories as top-level keywords (so all the oak chairs have "oak chair" in the title, etc). This will get you a bit more granular than just blanketing the site with the broadest possible term. Your client should still be prepared that only one or two pages from the site will rank for that broad of a term.
-
Yes I agree. By all means have something on the general site pages that the company supply "oak furniture", but on the products pages themselves it will be enough to have something like oak sideboard, oak cabinet, oak table etc as appropriate.
Peter
-
Thanks Peter for your Answer.
The issue is there are about 4000 products and having keyword oak furniture adding to each of the product name will cause issues. As i think if i want to rank for keyword oak furniture then 4000 pages will be competing for the word "Oak furniture"
-
Hi Adnan
To answer you firstly on Hummingbird and SEO Guru's opinion, yes, it's correct in part, but your client should not get caught up with idea that responding to Hummingbird requires a new SEO magic trick. Hummingbird is the evolution of what Google has been doing for quite a while meaning that today SEO is not so much about saying how do I target this or that keyword, but rather how you answer the questions your target customers are asking.
So whilst including keywords or phrases into a page Title tag is still relevant, it's not about top loading pages, but making sure the whole page is targeted which actually could mean, in terms of that page's content, that you are targeting multiple key phrases.
You are right in saying you shouldn't just be repeating one key phrase such as "oak furniture" across all pages. A Title tag is like the title of a page in a book. It tells the visitor and the search engine what that page is about which then of course needs to be backed up by the content on that page. So all pages on a site cannot be just about "oak furniture".
Having said that, it may be that your client's site could do with an SEO makeover and as such that may mean updating some page Titles and consequently the page URLs. If that happens, you will need to use 301 redirects to make sure old page URLs are redirected to the new page URLs.
I hope the above helps,
Peter -
Hi Adnan,
If I understand your question, you have a page for each specific product, yes? So, you may want THAT page to rank better than most of your OTHER pages, for a specific search query relevant to the name of that product?
This is a very common issue for any shopping cart system. So, any good shopping cart CMS would be SEO friendly enough to ensure the product name is used prominently in the page title tag, and in an H1 or H2 heading tag, IMG alt tag, etc... Then, it's up to you to have a high-quality and relevant product description (page text) that uses good SEO for your important and related keywords and interesting content. That is what's important for on-page SEO.
I am not yet sure how hummingbird would affect this, just use the basic SEO good practices for on-page content, and you should do well.
The question then becomes, have you prioritized your keywords, including long-tail, for each product and it's own webpage? Have you optimized your content accordingly?
Hope that helps.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Blacklisted website no longer blacklisted, but will not appear on Google's search engine.
We have a client who before us, had a website that was blacklisted by Google. After we created their new website, we submitted an appeal through Google's Webmaster Tools, and it was approved. One year later, they are still unable to rank for anything on Google. The keyword we are attempting to rank for on their home page is "Day in the Life Legal Videos" which shouldn't be too difficult to rank for after a year. But their website cannot be found. What else can we do to repair this previously blacklisted website after we're already been approved by Google? After doing a link audit, we found only one link with a spam score of 7, but I highly doubt that is what is causing this website to no longer appear on Google. Here is the website in question: https://www.verdictvideos.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rodneywarner0 -
Keyword rank and redirecting
I'm creating a new amazon affiliate site. I've researched other successful sites. I've noticed that they are ranking for 1000s of keywords, but many of these long tail keywords are redirected back to a main page. I can see how this can reduce the overall total amount of content pages on the site. How are you able to rank for the keyword in the first place if the the page is redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lkomontt760 -
A specific keyword has dropped from #1 in Google to nowhere at all...
Hi guys, I hope you can help. We have a large ecommerce website which has different domains for each language - GB, USA, DE, AU & CA. I've been working my way through the errors that have been flagged in Moz and today I noticed something quite worrying. One of our strong keywords has dropped from 1st place to nowhere at all. However, the Canadian version is ranking in the UK desktop search and our mobile site is appearing in the desktop search too. The keyword is 'personalised macbook cover' and the page in question is https://www.mrnutcase.com/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/ I'm confused as this page was ranking brilliantly a couple of weeks ago and now it's nowhere to be seen. We've added alternate and canonical tags to distinguish which site is mobile and which site is desktop. We've also submitted a sitemap so that it takes into account all of the languages. There are no harmful links and we've changed the content of the page across each language. I've attached what appears in the SERP's in the UK. (there is the mobile version ranking at the top and the Canadian version further down the page) Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Danny webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=personalised%20macbook%20covers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyNutcase0 -
I have 2 keywords I want to target, should I make one page for both keywords or two separate pages?
My team sells sailboats and pontoon boats all over the country. So while they are both boats, the target market is two different types of people... I want to make a landing page for each state so if someone types in "Pontoon Boats for sale in Michigan" or "Pontoon boats for sale in Tennessee," my website will come up. But I also want to come up if someone is searching for sailboats for sale in Michigan or Tennessee (or any other state for that matter). So my question is, should I make 1 page for each state that targets both pontoon boats and sailboats (total of 50 landing pages), or should I make two pages for each state, one targeting pontoon boats and the other sailboats (total of 100 landing pages). My team has seen success targeting each state individually for a single keyword, but have not had a situation like this come up yet.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanMaster0 -
How Does Google Treat Date Ranges For a Specific Keyword or Query?
How are date ranges interpreted by Google - ie if you type "1993-2003" does Google know 1995 is incl. and should be referenced for a query? What is the best practice for an ecomm site when it comes to a landing page for multiple years? Should be list out each year (looks spammy, "2003,2004,2005...), go with a full range (1993-2003 ), or is a two digit range suffice (88-95)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewv0 -
Keyword cannibalization
I ran the SEOMoz onpage diagnostic, and i got an alert for keyword cannibalization. My taxonomy is: www.mysite.com www.mysite.com/category (category page) www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword (supporting page) Links will be exact match in the primary navigation. www.mysite.com anchor text "category" => www.mysite.com/category www.mysite.com anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword www.mysite.com/category anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword and example would be /IT-support linking with anchor text "IT Support Servers" => /IT-Support/IT-Support-Servers I'm not going to have a cannibalization problem, am I?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Google Listings
How can i make my pages appear in google results such as menu, diner, hours, contact us etc.. when some searches for my keyword or domain take a look at this screen shot Thanks UbqY4kwA UbqY4kwA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vlad_mezoz0 -
Google Webmasters not Accurate
I recently updated all the Meta titles, descriptions and keywords on my website because in the past most were duplicate and/or written in the incorrect language. According to Webmaster Tools they have indexed our site post update, but we still have the same number of HTML issues. When I click to investigate the issues further it is clear they are reflecting the old Meta not the new stuff we just added. Should this fix itself the next time Google crawls my site or is there something else I should be doing about the issue? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0