When researching search engine results, why do we use quotes around long tail keywords? People normally don't use quotes when performing a search so it seems to me, that by using quotes, the results end up low when there may actually be tons of competition out there. For example, "teach a dog to stop barking" may yield 600 results but just typing in the phrase without the quotes will yield 250,000 results. So why use quotes in our research? I'm a relative newbie who is trying to understand. Thanks in advance.
Hello there, I'm no guru but I believe I have the short answer to your question--got into Bum Marketing awhile back---you use quotes around your keywords to analyze the strength of the competition. When you use quotes you are telling Google to find you only the best of the best sites containing those keywords....that is why you get a lesser result. Without quotes, like you said, the results may be 250,000 but half of those sites aren't even optimized fully for the keywords, so when you put in quotes you get to see exactly just how many sites are really specific to those keywords and the less the better for you! Hope this helps. Ladylioness
You know, you're right. I don't care about the SERP's of keywords with quotes around them typically. I just want to know how I rank when real people will be searching for my website on Google. I've used quotes to search for my own site before, but generally, people don't use them so I ignore that most of the time.
The simple explanation is... When you search a phrase in quotes, Google will only serve up the results of pages that have that exact phrase on them, so that tells you how many pages are optimized for that exact phrase, which is a more accurate measure of your competition If you search a phrase without quotes, Google will serve up the results of pages that have any of those words on them. So using your example, if you search for "teach a dog to stop barking" (with quotes) Google will only show the pages that have the exact phrase teach a dog to stop barking If you search, teach a dog to stop barking (without quotes), Google will show you pages that have the word Dog or Barking or teach or stop this is not a true measure of your competition Finally, when a person searches your phrase (he will not use quotes), Google's search results will have the webpages with the exact phrase on them HIGHER in the results than those pages that just contain one or two of those words So if you optimize a page with that exact phrase in the Title meta tag, Description meta tag, URL, H1 header and about 1-2% throughout your content as well as in anchor text in backlinks... you will have an excellent chance at getting 1st page of Google I hope this helps Vstar
ladylioness and vstar - thank you so much for the explanation. I now understand completely why I need to use quotes. Have a great day.
if you do not use quotes not all results can be considered competing pages as they are not optimized for this long tail keyword, they may contain related keywords but not that one