Question Regarding Best X vs Best x under 1000 keywords

[tyealia]

In 2019 does it still make sense to make a large 4k word article on Best X and include keywords like Best X under 500 Best X under 1000. Or should you make separate pages for each. Affraid of canabilization but also afraid that these keywords stand alone enough to have their own pages.

When looking in the serps most top 10 pages have seperate pages for best x under 1000 etc.

Opinions?

 

[Noisegen]

I struggle with this as well! I think a lot of it depends on search volume, difficulty in ranking for the keyword you would most prefer to rank for, and the competition’s backlink levels.

If you go for the one big article and put your “Best Widget under $X” keywords in H2s, you get the advantage of being able to send all backlinks to that one page for promotion. You also get the advantage of a high word count on a single post, which is probably helpful.

If you chose to make each post separate, you get the advantage of each keyword going in the URL and title, which is significant. But getting links to multiple pages quickly become a nightmare, and of course there are cannibalization risks.

I try to look at search intent and difficulty ranking for the group of keywords in determining this issue. If a query for “best widget under $Z” is fundamentally a different topic than “best widget under $Y”, then it’s probably best to separate them.

For example best video card under $1000 may be a very different topic than the best video card under $500. If that’s the case, separate them. If they’re just looking a different price ranges of similar products with not wildly different use cases, keep them together in one post.

 

[Ryuzaki]

It's tricky and I agree with what both of you guys above me have said.

I've done both, and these days I'd just do separate posts if you have the throughput.

The reason is that if you're hyper-optimized for "Best Blank Under $X" you'll need less links to rank for those, which are going to be far less competitive than "Best Blank."

Then, when you're optimized for "Best Blank" you're going to be less optimized for the "Under $X" portion. And the "Under $X" posts should have less page rank and less of a chance to cannibalize the big post. The big post won't rank for the "Under $X" variation because it doesn't feature that text. The big post will get the most external and internal links too.

I don't think there will be as much crossover as we'd anticipate if the on-page is done right.