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Sometmes I don't get keywords

by marks2424
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Sometimes I don't get it with keywords and here's why. I have a travel site going to Italy and for many years I was on page one. Even though my main keyword said it only got about 1000 hits a month. Now that same keyword says it only gets about 100 hits a month.

How ever when I do a keyword search for an alternative keyword google it gives me almost nothing. I know keywords are important but if you get nothing useful what do you do.

My big problem is just how does someone who doesn't know how to plan a vacation ask how to plan a vacation. Which was one of my main keywords how to plan a vacation to Italy. When I put that into google keyword planner they tell me it only gets 100 a month but don't give me much in the way of how people ask how to ask that question now. Yet if you type that into google the page is filled with the top booking companies like travelocity, expedia and all the other.

This gives me another problem because of course google says they have new ways of ranking that doesn't involve backlinks and more about articles but we all know those big booking companies don't have how to articles on their sites anywhere.

Now I still get a lot of traffic from my internal pages but my homepage gets almost nothing anymore and that was about half my clicks but like I said how else can someone ask how to plan a trip to italy without saying it. It's not like Italy isn't the 3rd most popular travel destination and yet there is almost no keywords listed by google even pointing to italian travel. Any Ideas.
#keywords #sometmes
  • Profile picture of the author aizaku
    wait, are you ranking for the term how to plan a trip to Italy?

    i see nothing but the big dogs for that search:
    lonelyplanet
    huffington
    fudors
    etc..

    i'm sure there is plenty of traffic for that term.. but im also sure it'd be very difficult to rank for that keyword

    best of luck
    Ike Paz
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  • Profile picture of the author raven lodge motel
    The best way to know the keywords you need is to search for your competitors, try to first seek what type of keywords they are using before using an SEO tool or keyword planner to determine the keyword variation you need to use. And then you could start writing from there.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by marks2424 View Post

    Sometimes I don't get it with keywords and here's why. I have a travel site going to Italy and for many years I was on page one. Even though my main keyword said it only got about 1000 hits a month. Now that same keyword says it only gets about 100 hits a month.

    How ever when I do a keyword search for an alternative keyword google it gives me almost nothing. I know keywords are important but if you get nothing useful what do you do.

    My big problem is just how does someone who doesn't know how to plan a vacation ask how to plan a vacation. Which was one of my main keywords how to plan a vacation to Italy. When I put that into google keyword planner they tell me it only gets 100 a month but don't give me much in the way of how people ask how to ask that question now. Yet if you type that into google the page is filled with the top booking companies like travelocity, expedia and all the other.

    This gives me another problem because of course google says they have new ways of ranking that doesn't involve backlinks and more about articles but we all know those big booking companies don't have how to articles on their sites anywhere.

    Now I still get a lot of traffic from my internal pages but my homepage gets almost nothing anymore and that was about half my clicks but like I said how else can someone ask how to plan a trip to italy without saying it. It's not like Italy isn't the 3rd most popular travel destination and yet there is almost no keywords listed by google even pointing to italian travel. Any Ideas.



    My advice is build out multiple internal pages instead of using the Home page as a catchall for the majority of your keywords. That spreads the risk out over multiple pages/keywords instead of one webpage failing.

    Create FAQ pages, that way you get to add search phrase questions to your webpage along with the relevant answer. This also allows you to target Google Schema SERP questions.

    Followed backlinks still rank pages, so you're not going to be able to rank for traffic keywords unless you have followed backlinks.

    Have you checked your backlink profile lately to see If you've lost any followed links?
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  • Profile picture of the author marks2424
    Aizake, you would think there would be a high count but when I do a keyword search in Google for how to plan an italian vacation or how to plan a trip to italy Google says there is less then 100 people who ask that for a month. That is why I said it doesn't make any sense when I get their results. When I ask for suggestions on that term I get nothing with the words Italian or Italy in them and that is what I don't understand, how does someone ask about Italy or Italian without using those words. I can't imagine only my link to google keyword tools could have something wrong with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author marks2424
    Yukon, I have been doing that and as of probably january I get most of my traffic from internal pages, but since Google almost never gives me what keywords people use to get to my pages when looking at anayltics I don't really know what additional articles I could add to get more traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by marks2424 View Post

      Yukon, I have been doing that and as of probably january I get most of my traffic from internal pages, but since Google almost never gives me what keywords people use to get to my pages when looking at anayltics I don't really know what additional articles I could add to get more traffic.


      There's things you can do to get a better idea what traffic is searching.
      • Track the incoming traffic keywords from search engines (Google, etc...) directly on your site (not Google Analytics). Google has throttled a lot of this data but they still show a lot of keywords. I track 2,500 keywords per Wordpress site and that data is still updated in real time every single day.
      • Add an internal search to your site and track the keyword data.
      • Check sites like SEMrush to see what data shows up for your own site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Edmontontech
    I think you pretty much have a lot of competition for that type of keyword which is very general in terms of the travel industry. You could try to specify your keywords, like apartment for rent in Italy, things to do in Italy or something like that. I am sure people who would like to travel to Italy would look for those as well.
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