Keyword variations

Ok, it's still early here, so I hope this comes out coherent.

If i'm optimizing for a keyword phrase, does it also optimize for the individual words in the phrase? For example, yoga information, does it also help with just the word yoga?

I'm going to be playing with some anchor text and am curious to know how that works.

Thanks!

 

Yes and no. The words are taken into account individually, but the single words will get less boost because the other words in the phrase will dilute the optimization. In other words, all other things being equal you would never beat a site that is targeting only the word yoga.

 

Thanks That will make some of my work a bit tougher, but at least I have a better sense of where to go.

 

Try working the 3 word phrases first which will include the single keyword in it. Then as time goes by and you rank high on the 3 word phrase you will also start ranking well for the 2 word phrase and then the 1 word phrase. This I have learned by experience. You can also target pages for the 1 word phrase by using anchor text and title etc... be the one word.

 

Good points Matt/Debunked

Anyone have any solid 'proof of concept' on which is better to optimize for
more focused 'KeyPhrase' searches or generic single 'keyword' searches

Not just from a shear traffic standpoint, but some of us are concerned about some sort of conversion as well (IE Sales, memberships, form fill-out, forum posts, business leads, visitor stickiness, recurrent visits)

I always focus my optimization on keyphrases as opposed to the generic single keywords since competition is less / and relevancy/conversion seems to be higher.

Others may have a different experiance. I think it'd be interesting to hear aurguments for both.

 

Wendy, you should use variations of your keywords/keyphrases as that is really a natural way of speaking. Maybe you have a heading of "Yoga Mat Reviews" on your page. You will say things like, "...when doing yoga, my mat is located..." or you might say, "My reivew of this particular yoga mat...". You will also want links that point to that page to vary somewhat as if I were to find that page and want to link to it because I think it is a good review of yoga mats, I might link to it with "mat reviews", "good yoga mat review", "click here", or something else. It would not kill you to bold or italicize some of the keywords/phrases as well.

 

Oh that's a good idea thanks

What got me to thinking about this is I do rank #1 in msn now for yoga information. Which, while nice, is not that cometitive a word. I like the idea of doing a variety of keyword phrases that also contain 'yoga'

chachi - I know that bold and italicize do help, but i have yet to find a way to do that in a paragraph of text without it looking stupid. I also need to add a stylesheet on that site, which i'm working on