Do Keyword Phrases in the Copy Need to be an Exact Match?

From: Meghan Deal
Subject: Keyword/phrase order

Jill,

I recently attended the Search Engine Strategies Conference, and really enjoyed your session. The problem I am running up against is word order. Say my keyword phrase was "truck rental." Someone could also search for "rental truck" or the plural. Then we also get "moving truck," "moving truck rental," "rental moving truck," "moving rental truck," etc., all the plurals, etc., and they are all searched on. Where does the madness end?

I have done my research and I know which are the best ones, but if I have a page that I could switch around the order, should I?

Do I have to optimize all the phrases, or will optimizing for truck rental do it for rental truck, and will moving truck rental do it for all of the combos?

I planned on optimizing the most popular, but will word order just get me bonus searches? And also, how are plurals handled?

Do I need to optimize for plurals or just stick them in when I can?

Also, how important is it for them to be all together as a phrase or within a phrase or sentence. Say moving and truck rental are in the same sentence, but not all together (it is quite a mouthful). I hope you see what my questions are. I know it is confusing, but I appreciate any and all help you can send my way.

Thank you!

Meghan Deal


~~~Jill's Response~~~

Hi Meghan,

These are very important questions, and ones that I get asked a lot at conferences.

Generally, you want to be sure to use any keyword phrase in the exact order and form in which you want it to show up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). If you want the plural version to show up, you've gotta use the plural form in your copy. If it's a very competitive phrase, using it just once or twice will NOT be enough to get you high rankings. For best results, be sure to use the exact phrase a number of times within the copy on that page.

Yes, the search engines can put together different words within your copy and create a phrase out of them; however, if another site is using that exact phrase on one of their pages, and your page is not using it, chances are that the other page will outrank yours (assuming all else is equal). The search engines rightly assume that an exact phrase match is more relevant than a non-exact match.

If all the various forms of a particular phrase are important to you, you'll want to use them all within your copy. You *don't* need to place them all on the same page, however. Remember, you have a whole site to work with. Don't even think about trying to use ten different forms of a phrase on one single page of your site; that would just be silly. What will happen is you'll end up diluting all of the phrases, and you'll also make the page unreadable to your human visitors.

It's important to choose just a few variations to work with for each page of the site. You should be able to easily work with both the singular and plural versions of a phrase on one page of the site without it sounding dumb. You can also throw in some "ing" endings on that same page if it makes sense to do so. Just don't try to do everything all on one page. On your main page, use the keyword phrases that get searched on the most. On inner pages, feel free to create new phrases by experimenting with the keywords in a different order. Usually I say to focus on two or three keyword phrases per page; however, when you're dealing with related phrases like plurals and "ings," you can sometimes use four or five phrases on the same page. For example, "phrase 1 singular," "phrase 1 plural," "phrase 2 singular" and "phrase 2 plural" could possibly all be used on one page without it sounding weird. Alternatively, it might be easier to write the copy if you stick with all singulars on one page, and plurals on another. You'll have to try it out and see what works best for your particular keywords and your writing style.

When you have a shorter phrase as part of your longer phrase, e.g., "moving truck" and "moving truck rental," you've got the phrase "moving truck" covered in both of these phrases. In fact, using longer keyword phrases that also contain shorter phrases within them is a great search engine optimization technique. By doing this you can shoot for a more competitive, shorter phrase such as "moving truck," but also have your butt covered with the longer, less competitive "moving truck rental." Nothing like getting two keyword phrases for the price of one, if you ask me!

Hope this helps!

Jill