Please help me understand how to target keywords in 2020

Hello BHW,

I am struggling to understand the best way to target keywords in 2020 now that Google's semantic understanding has gotten better. My confusion is mainly around on-page elements, url structure and anchors.

I've been out of the game for about 10 years now, and a lot has changed. Let me start with how it was back in my day and hopefully someone can help me understand how it's changed.

Working example from 2010:

Main Target Keyword: "seo expert boston"

Home Page Title: "The SEO Gurus | SEO Expert Boston" <--- target keyword stuffed into title
Snippet Text: "Looking for an SEO Expert in Boston? We are Bostons leading SEO experts...blah blah"
Home Page H1: "SEO Expert Boston - That's how our clients describe us!" <---again, trying to jam an already awkward term into the H1 tag to match the target keyword
Home Page Content: Main keyword mentioned a few more times and LSI content everywhere else

Secondary Target Keyword: "best content marketing boston" <---another awkward term when trying to use in a sentence

URL: www.domain.com/blog/best-content-marketing-boston <-- keyword in slug
Page Title: "How to find the best content marketing in Boston" <-- keyword massaged into title, still slightly awkward to read, but hey, SEO, man!
Page H1: "Best Content Marketing in Boston - Our Top Company Picks"
etc etc.

Rinse and repeat for every decent keyword in your niche.

So we created these awkward url structures, page titles, even EMD's around keywords that had good volume - All to satisfy the Google bot.

Now I understand things have changed and Google understands that many keywords will be written in different ways, even using different words altogether, but will have the same intent, so it'll rank them together. It seems the old practice of targeting phrase match has essentially died on its belly.

So my question to the SEO experts here, is how do you go after a keyword in 2020, especially the ones that, like my example above, are quite awkward as they are typed into Google?

If anyone could use my example keyword and modify my 2010 example for 2020, that would be fantastic.

Thanks

The basics are the same. But the way of using it changed in current SEO strategies.

You have to change your strategies from targeting keywords. You can't simply go for SEO expert Boston as your main keyword. Because these kinds of keywords will have much more competition. You have to choose the long tail low competition keywords. There many tools available for finding the best keyword.

Everythings is same like before. You can use the keywords in the title and URL. But you can't overstuff your keywords. you can't use an awkward sentence in those descriptions and titles. keyword density in your content should be around 2 - 3 % percentage.

SEOspur said:

You have to change your strategies from targeting keywords. You can't simply go for SEO expert Boston as your main keyword. Because these kinds of keywords will have much more competition. You have to choose the long tail low competition keywords. There many tools available for finding the best keyword.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your insights.

So if I'm to change my strategy from targeting specific keywords, what would I target? (I'm assuming you are advocating targeting multiple long tail keywords), how would I do that without identifying a main keyword for the homepage?

Thanks again

Of course, you have to choose your main keywords. But don't try to do, on-page optimization by targeting only with the main keyword.

Try to rank for multiple long-tail keywords. for example, If you are getting ranking top for more than 10 long-tail keywords with more than 10 pages means google will automatically start to give the results for your main keywords also.

SEOspur said:

Of course, you have to choose your main keywords. But don't try to do, on-page optimization by targeting only with the main keyword.

Try to rank for multiple long-tail keywords. for example, If you are getting ranking top for more than 10 long-tail keywords with more than 10 pages means google will automatically start to give the results for your main keywords also.

Click to expand...

Right. So your'e saying don't try to rank the homepage for a specific keyword, go for a broad topic, ignoring any specific (exact/phrase) keywords. Just keep it related.

Then try to rank sub-pages for the related long tail keywords until eventually Google will rank your homepage for the best keyword anyway (Google chooses it, not you)

Still I must ask, how do you rank the sub-pages for long-tail keywords that you're targeting? KW in title (exact match), KW in URL (exact match) etc etc

Thanks again

croixstar said:

how do you rank the sub-pages for long-tail keywords that you're targeting? KW in title (exact match), KW in URL (exact match) etc etc

Click to expand...

Yes, As I mentioned before, you can use keywords in URL, title, description, H1tag, content. As long as thy are looks natural and related to the article you can use those keywords. It should be stuffed all over the places of your pages. Internal link building is much important in current SEO statistics. You have chances of increasing the traffic if you are ranking for the multiple inner pages with related long-tail keyword.

Tip#1 Use more synonyms, now it looks exactly as a SEO text from 2010

This way your text will look more natural, and you will target more keywords:

SEO Expert Boston | SEO Firm | SEO Boston | SEO Consultant | Boston SEO Company | SEO Agency Boston MA

Tip#2 Use FAQ section, search for your niche questions at answerthepublic

I would make sure your utilizing the meta description to your advantage as well, not just the title!