~~~Writing for the Search Engines~~~
From: Brian Piepgrass
My question is on the positioning of key phrases within body text.
Essentially, is it better to ensure that your key phrases remain
bunched together as a whole? Or can you break them apart so long as
you include all the words? For example, if the phrase "digital imaging
software" is a good phrase for you site, should you write your copy to
include the key phrase exactly? "We offer many excellent digital
imaging software packages for consumers and corporations" Or will it
be equally effective to include all the words of your key phrase but
broken up "Many corporations use our software to manage their digital
media, and imaging resources."
Will different search engines react differently?
Thank you in advance! Your articles are extremely useful and have
helped me with many SEO questions!
Brian Piepgrass
Web Marketing Specialist
www.ACDSYSTEMS.com
~~~Heather's Response~~~
Hey, Brian!
What a good question. We've heard this question from our clients, but
I don't think we've addressed this issue in Rank Write.
When you're writing your copy, yes, the keyphrases have to be in a
particular order. In fact, when you receive a Word Tracker report
(and I'm not sure about the format of other keyphrase reporting tools)
you receive a list like this:
5 gazillion predicted hits - digital
4 gazillion predicted hits - digital imaging software
2.5 gazillion hits - imaging
1.5 gazillion hits - digital software
1 gazillion hits - imaging software
(Of course, the numbers never go into the gazillions but, hey, I'm a
writer. I'm taking creative license here!)
You'll see that "digital" is the most searched-upon phrase and it has
a predicted five gazillion hits per day. Sound like a tempting
keyphrase choice? "Oh no," you say. "That's a keyWORD, and I know
it's darn near impossible to rank high for a single word."
Good job! You're exactly right. So let's move down the list.
Next, we find "digital imaging software." You'll notice that this
phrase is the second most popular - and other less-popular variations
are below it. For maximum effectiveness, you'll want to focus your
writing efforts on including the *exact* phrase (that is, digital
imaging software). That doesn't mean that you *can't* include "imaging
software" on your home page or any other page. Heck, if those
keyphrases are specific to your service, and they also rank well,
include 'em. What it does mean, however, is you can't "break up"
a keyphrase into its individual keyWORDS and expect to rank high.
Why? The search engines won't piece your keywords back together into
the wonderful keyphrase you had. In fact, it would be just like
writing for the one-word keyword "digital" as we discussed above.
Just include the entire phrase in your body copy, and you'll be fine.
(Now get ready for Jill's two cents. I just know she'll have some
more input for you!)
Thanks for your question! Keep those online writing and SEO questions
coming!
Heather
~~~Jill's unsolicited 2 cents~~~
For maximum effectiveness, you definitely want the keyphrase kept
intact. Be sure to also use it the same exact way in your Title tag,
Meta tags and your Alt tags. That's basically all there is to it! -
Jill
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