I recently launched a new web host reviews site, and after spending some time researching keywords I settled on one main phrase, "web host reviews." Using Google's keyword tools, I was trying to decide between targeting "web host reviews" or "web hosting reviews." The first phrase got 8,100 global around monthly searches, while the second got 60,500 global monthly searches. I figured the first one would be easier to optimize for. I notice if I do a search in Google for "web host reviews" without the quotes, almost every result has titles and descriptions that are optimized for "web hosting reviews" as if "host" is not optimized for, and "hosting" is. My question is, should I have optimized for "web hosting reviews" instead of just "web host reviews?" I've also thought about finding a better long tail key phrase, but just for the sake of these two phrases, am I doing ok by optimizing for "web host reviews" as apposed to the other? Thanks.
On an additional note, is it considered spam to include my key phrase twice in the page title? Something like: "web host reviews, read & write web host reviews."
Daily performance of keyword phrases can be examined in the statistical data provided by the pay per search engines. This will enable you to study how the phrases perform.
No, thats not considered spam (as far as I know). Its actually a good idea to do that for SEO purposes. As for your original question, it could just be that you have very little competition for the term "web host reviews" on the first page of the search results.
Does that mean I need to sign up for PPC in order to research that data for my key phrases? It appears that "web hosting reviews" shows up in titles and descriptions through page 6 of the serps when I type in "web host reviews" except for one result on page 6, and again on page 7. Does this mean that even though the keyword tool says 8,000 people search for "web host reviews" a month, it isn't really that popular of a search term? I can't figure out if I should continue targeting that phrase because of possible low competition, or if it is useless and I need to target the most popular phrase, "web hosting reviews."