Key Takeaways
Each page on a contractor website should cover one clear topic thoroughly, not chase a list of unrelated keywords. Modern search engines and AI tools evaluate topical depth and site architecture, not keyword density percentages. Pages that focus on a single topic rank for dozens of related phrases naturally, while pages that scatter across multiple topics dilute authority and rarely win any position outright. Expect four to six months before organic rankings produce meaningful traffic.
- Target one primary topic per page, not one isolated keyword, and let related phrases appear naturally in the content.
- Pages with 1,000 to 4,000 words covering a topic thoroughly outperform thin pages that repeat a keyword at a set density.
- Keyword density as a metric is effectively obsolete. Google and AI tools reward clarity and completeness, not a one-to-three percent formula.
- Two keywords that share the same searcher intent belong on one page. Two keywords that serve different intents require separate pages.
- Internal linking between related pages is not optional. Orphan pages with no inbound or outbound text links rarely surface in search results.
- SEO silos, hub pages connected to spoke pages by text links, accelerate topical authority for contractor service areas and service types.
- Organic SEO takes four to six months to show results. Contractors who need immediate leads should run Google Ads or Local Service Ads in parallel.
Why One Topic Per Page Beats a Long Keyword List
A contractor website page built around one clear topic consistently outperforms a page built around a sprawling keyword list because search engines and AI systems evaluate whether a page completely answers a specific need, not whether it repeats a target phrase a calculated number of times. According to Semrush data cited in keyword research reporting, approximately 88 percent of searches that trigger Google’s AI Overviews carry informational intent, and those AI summaries pull directly from pages that answer a question thoroughly. Scattered pages do not earn that placement.
The practical implication for home-service contractors is straightforward. A roofing company in Asheville should not build one page that tries to rank for “roof repair Asheville,” “roof replacement Asheville,” and “how to fix a roof leak” simultaneously. Those three phrases represent at least two distinct intents, a buyer ready to hire and a homeowner trying to diagnose a problem themselves, and they belong on separate pages. Each page, built around its single topic and written to 1,000 to 2,000 words at minimum, will naturally attract dozens of related longtail phrases without any deliberate keyword stuffing.
This approach also aligns with how AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude index information. Video transcripts on YouTube contribute to AI visibility as well, with video content accounting for roughly 29 percent of Google’s AI ranking signals according to industry estimates. The principle is the same whether the content is text or video: one topic, covered completely, signals authority.
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How Keyword Density Rules Changed After 2024
Keyword density as a measurable target became obsolete after Google’s large language model updates in 2023 and 2024. Before that shift, SEO practitioners tracked a one-to-three percent keyword density ratio, meaning a 1,000-word page needed a target phrase to appear roughly 10 to 30 times. That math is no longer relevant to ranking performance.
Did Google ever actually reward keyword density?
In the early 2000s through roughly 2012, Google’s algorithms relied heavily on exact phrase matching, which made density ratios meaningful. Pages that hit a certain threshold for a phrase appeared more frequently in results for that phrase. Google’s Hummingbird update in 2013, followed by RankBrain in 2015 and BERT in 2019, shifted the system toward understanding intent and topic relationships rather than counting phrase repetitions. By the time AI Overviews launched in 2024, density had become a non-factor.
What does Google actually measure now instead of keyword density?
Google’s current systems evaluate topical completeness, meaning whether a page answers the full range of questions a searcher with a given intent would need answered. A page about water heater repair that covers diagnostic steps, cost ranges, when repair makes more sense than replacement, and how to hire a plumber covers the topic thoroughly. That thoroughness causes the page to rank for dozens of longtail variations, such as “water heater repair cost near me” or “how much does water heater repair cost,” without those phrases being deliberately planted. The keyword usage occurs naturally when the content is genuinely informative.
Is there any keyword metric still worth tracking in 2025?
Tracking which keyword a page is designed to rank for remains useful as an organizational tool. Knowing the primary topic helps with writing the page title, the meta description, and the first heading. Beyond that organizational function, density ratios serve no practical purpose. What does still matter is whether the primary phrase appears in the title tag and the opening paragraph, which signals topic relevance to crawlers without requiring a specific count throughout the body text.
How do I find keywords in Google Search Console?
Google Search Console shows the actual search queries driving impressions and clicks to each page on a site. To pull real keyword data, log in to Search Console, navigate to the Performance report, click the Pages tab, select a specific URL, and then switch to the Queries tab to see every phrase Google matched to that page. This workflow reveals which topics a page is already ranking for and where topical overlap between pages may be causing cannibalization.
For contractors, this process is particularly useful for identifying which service pages are competing against each other. If two plumbing pages both appear in Search Console results for “drain cleaning Asheville NC,” that is a cannibalization signal. One page is splitting authority with the other, and neither is likely to reach page one. The fix is to consolidate the weaker page into the stronger one using a 301 redirect, so all ranking signals point to a single URL.
Search Console data can also be exported as a CSV file and uploaded directly to an AI tool like Claude. A prompt such as “Do I have pages competing for the same queries?” will surface overlap patterns across hundreds of URLs in seconds. This is more efficient than reviewing each page manually, especially for contractor sites with dozens of service area pages. Learning to read this data is a core skill covered in detail in local SEO guides written specifically for home-service contractors.
What does position 10 to 15 in Search Console mean for my pages?
A page hovering between positions 10 and 15 for several queries but winning none of them is a focus problem. It is competing for too many topics at once, diluting its authority across all of them. The fix is to narrow the page to one clear topic and move unrelated subtopics to their own pages. Position one in Google earns approximately 22 percent click-through rate. Position two earns roughly 13 percent. Positions 10 through 15 earn less than one percent, so consolidation is worth the effort.
How do I use Search Console to decide if two pages should be merged?
Pull the query data for both pages. If the same five or more queries appear in both query lists with similar impression counts, the pages are competing directly. In that case, choose the page with stronger engagement metrics, keep it, fold the content from the weaker page into it, and set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the surviving page. If the query lists are entirely different and represent different intents, the pages are correctly separated and do not need to be merged.
When One Page Can Target a Small Cluster of Two to Four Keywords
A single page can cover two to four keyword variations without causing cannibalization when all of those variations share the exact same searcher intent and would satisfy a visitor searching for any one of them. The test is whether one well-organized page would make a searcher happy regardless of which phrase they typed.
What is a good example of keywords that belong on the same page?
“Emergency plumber” and “24-hour plumber” are different phrases with different surface meanings but identical intent. The person searching either phrase wants an available plumber right now. Building one page that covers emergency and after-hours plumbing availability, with a clear service description and contact information, satisfies both searches. Creating two separate pages for those phrases would split authority and create cannibalization, since Google would see two pages answering the same question with the same intent.
What is a good example of keywords that need separate pages?
“Kitchen remodeling Charlotte NC” and “living room remodel Charlotte NC” sound similar but describe different scopes of work, different rooms, different materials, and different buying decisions. A visitor searching for kitchen remodeling help has a fundamentally different project in mind than a visitor looking for living room renovation. Those two intents require separate pages so that each page can cover its specific topic completely. The same logic applies to “water heater repair” versus “water heater replacement,” since repair means fixing an existing unit and replacement means purchasing and installing a new one.
How do I run the same-intent test before building a new page?
Type both phrases into Google and compare the organic results that appear. If the same URLs rank for both phrases in roughly the same order, Google has already decided they share intent and one page is sufficient. If the results are substantially different, with different pages ranking for each phrase, that is Google signaling that the two phrases serve different needs and deserve separate content. This search results comparison takes about two minutes and prevents wasted content production.
Building an SEO Silo Structure for Contractor Websites
An SEO silo is a site architecture model where a hub page covering a broad service topic links to a collection of spoke pages covering narrower subtopics, and each spoke page links back to the hub. This internal linking structure tells search engines which page is the primary authority on a topic and how related pages connect to it. Contractors who implement this structure correctly have moved sites from zero visitors to thousands of daily visitors within three to five months, as documented in the publicly available CORE framework methodology.
What is the difference between a hub page and a spoke page?
A hub page covers a broad service category at an overview level. For a plumbing contractor, the hub might be a main plumbing services page that describes the full range of work offered. Spoke pages, sometimes called inner or supporting pages, cover specific subtopics such as water heater repair, drain cleaning, sump pump installation, or pipe repiping. Each spoke page links back to the hub, and the hub links out to each spoke. This two-way linking concentrates authority on the hub while making each spoke discoverable through the hub’s existing authority.
How many spoke pages does a contractor need to see results?
The number varies by market and competition level, but a starting point of five to ten spoke pages per service hub gives search engines enough linked content to recognize topical depth. A restoration contractor might build a hub page for water damage restoration and spoke pages for basement flooding, burst pipe cleanup, sewage backup cleanup, storm damage restoration, and mold assessment. That cluster of six to seven pages, all linked to each other with descriptive anchor text, signals to Google that the site is a genuine authority on water damage restoration in the target service area.
What happens to pages that are not connected by internal links?
Orphan pages, meaning pages with no internal links pointing to them from other pages on the same site, rarely appear in search results. Google’s crawlers discover new pages by following links. If a contractor publishes a spoke page but never links to it from the hub or any other page, crawlers may find it eventually, but the page will not accumulate authority through internal link equity. It is effectively invisible. Every spoke page needs at least one inbound text link from another page on the site, and the link anchor text should describe the spoke page’s topic accurately.
How Longtail Keywords Fit Into a One-Topic Strategy
Longtail keywords, phrases of five words or more, are not separate targets that require their own pages. They are natural byproducts of thorough topic coverage. A page that comprehensively covers water heater repair will automatically rank for longtail variations like “how much does water heater repair cost,” “water heater repair near me same day,” and “signs my water heater needs repair” without those phrases being written into the page intentionally.
Why are longtail phrases important for AI search results?
Searches containing eight or more words are approximately seven times more likely to trigger a Google AI Overview than shorter searches, according to keyword research data. Conversational AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity also tend to surface content in response to longer, more specific queries. A contractor page that thoroughly covers one topic, with enough depth to address the full range of related questions, is positioned to appear in both traditional search results and AI-generated answer summaries. This dual visibility is increasingly important as a growing share of consumers use AI tools to research home services.
Should contractors create separate pages for every longtail phrase they find?
No. Creating a separate page for every longtail variation of a primary keyword is the fastest path to cannibalization. A plumbing company does not need separate pages for “water heater repair cost,” “affordable water heater repair,” and “water heater repair same day.” All three phrases map to the same intent and the same primary topic. One thorough page about water heater repair services will rank for all three. The only reason to create a new page is if the intent is genuinely different, meaning the searcher would want a different kind of content or a different outcome from the one existing page provides.
Signs a Contractor Site Has Too Many Overlapping Pages
Keyword cannibalization, the condition where multiple pages on the same site compete for the same queries, is one of the most common reasons contractor websites plateau in rankings. Recognizing the signs early prevents months of wasted content production.
What does cannibalization look like in practice for a contractor site?
A remodeling contractor might publish a general home remodeling page, a kitchen and bathroom remodeling page, and a home renovation page for a specific city. All three pages may contain overlapping language about the same service, and all three may be targeting phrases like “home remodeling Asheville NC.” Google sees three pages competing for the same query and cannot confidently choose one to rank. The result is that all three hover in positions 8 through 20 rather than one of them reaching positions 1 through 3. Consolidating those three pages into one well-organized page typically produces a ranking improvement within 60 to 90 days.
How do I audit my current site for cannibalization without expensive tools?
Export the pages report from Google Search Console and download the associated query data for each URL. Upload that file to Claude or another AI assistant with the prompt: “Identify pages that are competing for the same search queries and recommend which to consolidate.” The AI will surface patterns across hundreds of URLs in a few seconds. As a manual backup, search Google for “site:yourdomainname.com keyword” replacing keyword with the phrase you are targeting. If two or more of your own URLs appear in those results, you have a cannibalization problem that needs to be resolved before adding more content.
What is the correct fix when two pages are competing for the same keyword?
Identify which page has stronger metrics, meaning more backlinks, more organic traffic, and better engagement data from Search Console and Google Analytics. Keep that page and migrate any unique, useful content from the weaker page into it. Then set a 301 redirect from the weaker page’s URL to the surviving page. The 301 redirect passes the link equity from the old URL to the new one, and Google consolidates the ranking signals onto the single remaining page. Do not simply delete the weaker page without setting the redirect, or the link equity accumulated by that URL will be lost entirely.
Timeline Expectations for Contractor SEO Campaigns
A realistic timeline for a home-service contractor’s SEO campaign to produce measurable organic traffic is four to six months from the time new content is published. In competitive markets or for brand new domains, that timeline may extend to twelve months. This is not a failure of the strategy but a structural characteristic of how search engines evaluate new content and build trust in a domain over time.
Why does contractor SEO take so long to show results?
Search engines need time to crawl new pages, index them, assess the quality of the content relative to competing pages, and then assign rankings. A new cluster of inner hub-and-spoke pages for a plumbing contractor in a mid-size market may take four months before any page reaches the first page of results. John Mueller, a Google Search Relations representative, has publicly stated that patience is appropriate for SEO campaigns and that rushing the process with shortcuts typically causes more harm than good. The authority that builds over four to six months is more durable than rankings gained through aggressive tactics.
What should contractors do while waiting for organic rankings to develop?
Google Ads and Local Service Ads provide immediate traffic while organic rankings are building. A contractor who launches an SEO campaign in January should simultaneously run paid search ads to maintain lead volume through the spring. By summer, organic rankings should begin producing leads, and the paid budget can be reduced or redirected. Running both channels in parallel is standard practice for contractors entering a new market or rebuilding a site after a redesign.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can one blog post rank for more than one keyword?
Yes, and most well-written blog posts rank for dozens of keywords rather than just one. Search engines connect content to topics and related queries, not to a single exact phrase. A post about sump pump maintenance written for a plumbing contractor will naturally rank for phrases like “how often to maintain a sump pump,” “sump pump maintenance cost,” and “sump pump maintenance checklist” without any of those phrases being deliberately inserted. The primary keyword determines the page’s focus, but topical completeness determines how many related queries it ranks for.
How do I know if my site has pages targeting the same keywords?
Download the pages and queries report from Google Search Console and look for the same queries appearing under multiple URLs. If two or three of your own pages rank in positions 5 through 20 for the same phrase, they are competing against each other. Uploading your Search Console export to an AI tool with a prompt asking for competing pages is faster than reviewing the data manually. Pages competing for the same query should be consolidated into one, with a 301 redirect set from the removed page to the surviving one.
Should every page on my contractor website target a keyword?
No. Pages like the contact page, the about page, the privacy policy, and navigation category pages do not need to target search keywords. Forcing keyword optimization onto those pages creates an unnatural reading experience without providing meaningful ranking benefit. The pages that should be built around a clear primary topic are service pages, service-area pages, and informational blog posts or resource pages. The remainder of the site exists to support user experience and should be written accordingly.
How many words should a contractor service page be?
Service pages targeting local commercial keywords generally perform well at 1,000 to 2,000 words. Informational pages targeting how-to or educational queries may need 2,000 to 4,000 words to cover the topic completely, particularly for queries that are likely to trigger AI Overviews. AI tools like ChatGPT have shown a preference for surfacing longer-form content in their answers. There is no universal minimum, but a page under 500 words rarely has enough topical depth to outrank competitors who have written more comprehensively.
What is keyword cannibalization and how does it hurt rankings?
Keyword cannibalization occurs when two or more pages on the same site compete for the same search query. Search engines cannot confidently choose one page to rank, so they may alternate between the two, show neither in top positions, or assign lower rankings to both than either would earn alone. For contractors, this commonly happens when a site has a main services page and multiple city-specific pages that all describe the same service in similar language. Consolidating overlapping pages into one focused URL typically improves rankings within 60 to 90 days.
How does internal linking affect keyword rankings for contractors?
Internal links tell search engines which pages are the most important on a site and how topics relate to each other. A spoke page about water heater repair that receives internal links from five other related pages accumulates more authority than an orphan page with no internal links. The anchor text of each internal link should describe the destination page’s topic clearly. Vague anchor text like “click here” or “learn more” provides less topical signal than descriptive text like “water heater repair services in Asheville.” Pages without any inbound internal links rarely rank regardless of content quality.
How long does it take for a new page to rank in Google?
For a new page on an established domain with existing authority, first-page rankings can appear in four to eight weeks for low-competition queries. For newer domains or competitive markets, the same page may take four to six months to reach the first page and up to twelve months to reach positions one through three. John Mueller of Google has stated publicly that patience is appropriate for SEO. Contractors who need leads immediately should run Google Ads or Local Service Ads during the four-to-six month organic development period rather than expecting fast organic results.
Is it worth building hundreds of pages targeting every possible keyword variation?
Building a large number of thin pages that each target a single keyword variation is a strategy that Google’s Helpful Content updates have consistently penalized since 2022. A smaller number of thorough, well-linked pages consistently outperforms a larger number of shallow pages. The practical approach for contractors is to identify the ten to twenty most commercially important service topics, build one strong page per topic, connect those pages with a hub-and-spoke internal linking structure, and add new pages only when a genuinely distinct service topic or service area requires separate coverage.
Start Identifying Topic Gaps on Your Contractor Site This Week
The most actionable step a home-service contractor can take today is to open Google Search Console, pull the pages report, and look for two things. First, identify any pages hovering in positions 10 through 20 for multiple queries without winning any of them. Those pages need to be narrowed to a single topic or consolidated with a stronger related page. Second, look for query overlap between pages, meaning the same phrase appearing under two different URLs. That overlap is costing real ranking positions.
From there, map out a hub-and-spoke structure for each major service category. Give each hub page 1,500 to 2,000 words of focused content, build out five to ten spoke pages per hub, and connect them all with descriptive text links. Then maintain that structure for four to six months before expecting significant organic traffic movement.
Contractors who want a structured approach to this process can review the local SEO strategies built specifically for home-service businesses to understand how topic authority and site architecture work together to produce durable rankings. The work is methodical, but the results compound over time in ways that paid advertising cannot replicate.
Full Transcript
The complete spoken content of the video above, in text.
Hey, I’m Jeremy with Push Leads, helping small businesses get more leads and without struggle.
And what we’re looking at today is how many keywords should you target for SEO? So, the simple answer is it’s one keyword per per page in most cases, right? And this is sort of changing with AI SEO happening and it’s we’re kind of moving away from keywords, you know, by themselves into more like topics.
And so you be should be really thinking about sort of topics per page and not super worried about keywords, right? So let’s get into it here.
Um, so the key takeaways is really instead of like a one keyword or five or 10 keywords, think about as different pages targeting different topics.
So you can target one primary topic per page and you could in that case in in the in the content whether you’re writing it or an AI is writing it.
You can have natural longtail coverage that happens naturally.
You obviously want to avoid putting too many keywords into the content.
Um and you want to build a structure of inner hidden pages.
All of these interhen pages need to be connected to each other.
And there’s a guy who figured out figured this out that he he got he went he took a website from his name is Corey and you can look up the core framework but he took a website from essentially zero visitors to thousands of visitors a day in like 3 to five months just by building inner hidden pages.
So, and you have to connect them with text links, but you need to have sort of this page structure and you need to expect sort of patience here, right? So, I started making a whole bunch of content around one of our niches, which is restoration companies and uh restoration SEO and and it looked looked like it took about four months, four to five months from making the content to where I started showing up in chat GBT AI searches and also showing up in Google for that.
So, expect there to be a maybe a six-month time period.
So, if you have a client that is expecting really fast results, they really need to be doing Google ads or or if you’re, you know, a small business owner yourself and you, you know, you do restoration or, you know, remodeling, you really need to be looking at page strategies like Google Ads LSA to really um get some momentum before um you know, before you before you expect SEO to happen.
So, and so let’s get into the short answer here.
The one topic um several related terms.
So, each page should be um built around one clear topic that maps to the primary keyword.
Um and this is going to be a real phrase somebody would search.
So, related phrases will occur naturally.
Don’t worry about putting related keywords.
It’ll just happen naturally.
Um and modern search engines of course do reward this approach.
According to Sumrush, which a one of the great tracking keyword software tools out there, nearly about 88% of searches that trigger AI, Google’s AI overviews are carrying carryformational intent and those summaries pull from the content on the page that answers those questions.
So pages that thoroughly cover one topic get service whether pages that kind of are scattered do not.
Right? So you can learn more about we have an onpage SEO guide.
So this brings up the the question really how many keywords per page is really kind of you have an SEO company saying this is how many keywords per page they’re really you know talking the old school um this is like really 2023 before 2024 before AI became a thing um and so it’s really an old methodology the goo how Google actually works is they understand topics and intent not just like the keywords or the phrase matches.
So a a a page or in this case an AI, you know, a video that I’m I’m actually making this video putting on YouTube and also um LinkedIn because AIS look at the transcription of videos as well, right? So in having an active YouTube channel is actually one of the things that makes you show up for AI.
I think it’s about 29% of Google’s AI um you know equation having video here.
And of course you need to upload to transcripts and have good titles and descriptions.
But bottom line is whether it’s video or you know content um Google understands it.
Um and position one of course gets 22% click-through rate.
Position two gets 13 on and on down.
So really want to focus on reli on cing um crafting really highquality content that around your um services and products or your client services and products.
So here’s a here’s a couple signs that you’re targeting too many keywords.
You have sort of unrelated top subtopics on the page.
The page is jumping between topics a searcher wouldn’t expect to find together and that’s diluting the topical authority.
you know, you are repeating a keyword over and over again, which creates an awkward reputation.
You have internal pages that are around the same topic, right? So, if you’ve got uh if you’re targeting um home remodeler um Charlotte, North Carolina, and you have two other pages going after home remodel Charlotte, home remodeler Charlotte, dude, that was done like 10, 15 years ago when Google wasn’t as smart.
So, and any page that hovers in position 10 to 15 for several terms that but wins none, that’s usually a focus problem.
That page is trying to go after too many pages.
So, how to choose your actual target keywords.
You really want to lead with the searcher intent, not the keyword list.
So, ask what someone is typing the search wants to accomplish.
Plumber near me.
They’re looking for a plumber right away.
Any kind of near me search is going to be right away.
how to fix a running toilet.
They want to solve it themselves, right? So any kind of how to term is going to be a DIYer.
Um, so once you know the intent, you can pick that phrase and you could put that in the title and description of your page and have at least a,000 to 2,000 words of content.
Um, sometimes AIS like Chat TBT reward content that’s 3 or 4 thousand words long.
Um and you also want to do all the things on that page um like internal links and citing um and also citing external websites.
There’s different things there that you can make the site uh the page more um visible in AI searches.
And here’s a graph about earning the top free mobile um positions, you know, showing you get 24% click-through rate um at the highest.
Position one, position two is like 13.
it goes on down to 10 and on down, right? So, um when should one page target multiple keywords? So, if you have there are some there are some cases where one page is targeting a small cluster of two to four terms and that’s going to be okay, right? So, for example, um if these if these two terms share the same intent, so emergency plumber and 24-hour plumber are going to be different keywords um but they describe the same need.
Um so in that case one single organized page could satisfy one searching for either phrase without going and making two pages right they belong together.
Now when do you should you split these um if satisfying both of these terms would pull the page apart.
So for example they need two separate pages.
So you have two totally different ideas like you know um kitchen remodeling Charlotte North Carolina living room remodel Charlotte North Carolina.
There’s going to be separate pages.
So be sure that you’re building a a structure around this.
Um a simple test to find out whether two keywords should be on the same page is if no is this is it the same intent? Would one page satisfy the both? Um, right.
So, if yes, then you combine those into one page.
If no, you can make two separate pages.
And here’s that example I just talked about.
Um, but we’re talking about water heater repair.
So, water heater repair and water heater replacement sounds similar, but this but in that but repair is where someone the searcher wants to fix what they have or hire a service to fix it.
And then water heater replacement, they essentially want to hire a plumbing company to just replace the whole thing, right? Um, and so they have another example of water heater repair and water heater not not heating that describe the same problem.
So in that case you could make one page satisfying them both.
And sure if you want to you could maintain a spreadsheet of hundreds or thousands of keywords.
Um, but it’s really better to build a structure or have an AI do it for you.
Um, hey I want to um I have a plumbing company and I want to have a whole bunch of inner pages around different topics.
Help me build a structure.
Right? That’s a great prompt to give to an AI.
And you want to group the keywords by topic and then by intent and then describe how many pages you want or get the AI to do it.
Topic.
You obviously want to group by topic.
So cluster all keywords around the same subject.
You want to layer by intent within each topic group.
Create separate informationational content from informationational from transactional intent.
These always need to be separate pages.
And you can assign one sort of main home for your pages.
So if you have like plumber repair page, that plumber repair could um could be inner hidden pages that connect to that plumber repair page.
And then you want to build these major these hub pages um and then link your little spoke pages to that, your inner hidden pages to that.
Um, so nearly 80% of AI overview triggering keywords fall in these lower difficulty ranges and structured pages are what really does it.
These inner hidden groups of pages.
So you can definitely learn a lot more on our website.
Um, and uh, we have a lot of information there about that.
One thing you got you got to remember is that keyword targeting connects to the rest of your site, right? Because Google’s looking at the individual pages, but they’re also looking at the entire site.
AI look at the entire site.
So nothing is in isolation.
The page you built around one keyword needs to have internal links pointing to that page and from that page, right? So internal linkings, internal links tell search engines what page is the most important and how the topics relate.
So a focused page gains authority faster than something that’s like not focused.
And again, the site architecture, the keyword position within your structure signals the topic authority itself.
So orphan pages, pages that don’t have any internal links going to and from them don’t really show up in Google.
So if you’re making these in hidden pages and you don’t have um text links between them, then you’ve just wasted all your time.
So we we [clears throat] so we call this SEO silos um us SEO people.
And SEO silos have been around forever.
Um and expect this to take four to six months, maybe a year to rank.
John Mueller with um Google says being patient is good.
So um need to be doing ongoing work and have ongoing patience.
So absolutely.
So is keyword density still worth tracking? Well, the old way is that marketers used to chase a keyword density by putting one to three% of density of keywords on the page.
It was really frustrating because you had to sort of double check it.
The modern reality is we don’t have to worry about that.
keyword density just happened sort of um it it’s essentially an so the modern reality is that keyword density as a metric is effectively obsolete Google systems reward clarity and completeness over density math so as long as you’re covering the topic naturally and thoroughly the keyword usage sort of happens naturally in the content so the goal is writing something that’s knowledgeable that a human would find generally useful and then search engines and also AIs will find that repetition as well.
And more repetition or inner hidden pages that are the same pages is what’s called cannibalization.
And we just talked about that.
You don’t want to have cannibalization.
That will cause you to get flags and dings from Google.
And then what about longtail keywords? Uh keywords that have like five or 10 words in it or you know um another way to think of this is AI um phrases or AI searches have long words and have have multiple words in it.
So these usually describe the same intent as the broader term.
So a page built around water heater repair naturally captures water heater repair cost near me without being a dedicated page.
So searches that have eight or more words are generally seven times more likely to trigger a Google’s AI overview.
So covering these longtail variations really helps as well.
So here’s some frequently asked questions.
Can one blog post rank for more key than one keyword? Absolutely.
And it usually does.
Um, a third a good blog post built around a clear primary keyword generally ranks for dozens of keywords because search engines are connecting the content to topics, not phrases.
What about how do I know if I have too many pages targeting similar keywords? You can look at search console for pages that are ranking the same.
Or better yet, upload your content to an AI and say you can download your service console and upload that to claude.
I choose I’m a huge fan of a cloud versus chat GDP.
And you could say, hey, do we have do we have p do I have pages that are competing? If two or three of your own pages are competing the results, that’s keyword cannibalization.
And so in this case, um you know, removing the older pages and doing four um 301 redirects really helps as well.
Should every page on my site target a keyword? No.
Obviously, pages like the about page, the contact page, navigation pages, these aren’t going to necessarily always target keywords.
So, don’t try to just over SEO it, right? It needs to feel like natural.
So, bottom line is one topic, one page done right, is going to be a clarity exercise.
building each page around one primary topic, writing it thoroughly enough to cover it completely, and just let the related phrases take care of themselves.
So, you can start on our onpage SEO guide to learn how to do that.
You can dig into topic authority and silos, and you can learn how to fix what’s broken.
I’m Jeremy Ashurn with Push Leads.
I help small businesses get more leads without struggle and frustration.
Talk to you soon.
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