58 replies to this topic

[OnlyTopResults]

OK - so by using all the tools in every keyword toolbox ever invented, I have come up with a series of keyword phrases that ought to generate some traffic for next Adsense project. The challenge is - they're phrase matched for competitiveness and are not "proper English". Let's imagine they are, in order of sexyness:

bowel cancer symptom
early symptom bowel cancer
sign and symptom of bowel cancer
cancer bowel sign symptom
advanced cancer bowel symptom

I have 2 broad questions which are both making my head hurt (let's ignore my bowels for the moment!)

1) I am going to commission a 1000 word article which must incorporate these, BUT, clearly most phrases don't read very well as they are. They would benefit from changing the order of the words and inserting a single word here or there. For example "early symptom bowel cancer" is crying out for the word "of" in the middle.

However if I do tweak them slightly - even just making a word like "symptom" become "symptoms" ... does that mean they then lose all of their competitive value?

2) Let's imagine I'm going for a 2% keyword density ratio when writing the article. Does that just apply to the number of times the whole keyword PHRASE appears? If it DID then, with an average of 4 words per phrase, each of the above phrases would need to appear 5 times on the page - which seems a lot!

The 2nd part of this same issue is that the individual words will obviously have their own KD and I can see the word "bowel" might be repeated too many times from a keyword density perspective.

Anybody got an asprin for my headache?

Cheers
Adrian

[SmellieNellie]

Hi Adrian -

In answer to your "of" question, you can add that in without it causing you a problem as the Search Engines will ignore it as they do all stop words.

Don't forget you can also punctuation to create the phrase ie:

....... early. A symptom of bowel cancer

Hope that helps.

[OnlyTopResults]

Both EXCELLENT tips - thanks very much indeed. I still have a dull headache, but then that's probably because I'm dull to start with

XX
Adrian

[Michael Martinez]

Most people search in what is called FINDALL mode, where word order and proximity are not really important. Simply using the words naturally in your copy should be sufficient. Of course, the more competitive an expression is, the more you have to optimize. At some point, you find yourself competing for expressions where people are just being really artificial.

In such cases, I think it would be better to build up linkage and let the artificiality hang in the collective anchor text. Your on-page copy should be natural, engaging, and compelling.

[torka]

Hi, Adrian!

To specifically address your second question, keyword density is a bogus measurement, irrelevant, and not worth the effort of working up a headache over.

Do as Michael suggests and use the words naturally in your content and you'll be fine.

--Torka

[SmellieNellie]

To specifically address your second question, keyword density is a bogus measurement, irrelevant, and not worth the effort of working up a headache over.

I couldn't agree with this more. If there is one thing I have never, ever done, it is to get hung up with keyword density. As long as I have used it within my copy I am happy, but as Torka so rightly says, at the end of the day, the copy has to read well otherwise you won't achieve your end objective anyway.

I tend to write the copy first and then go back and ensure that the keyword phrase appears within it rather than the other way around as that way you are not writing artificially.

HTH!

[OnlyTopResults]

I wanted to respond via the forum, so other people can benefit from the very helpful advice I've received, but the Quote function on this system is entirely different to any of the (many) others I subscribe to - and I've given up on how it's supposed to work! Intuitive it is not!

Michael Martinez made a very interesting point when he said:

"At some point, you find yourself competing for expressions where people are just being really artificial. In such cases, I think it would be better to build up linkage and let the artificiality hang in the collective anchor text.

Michael, are you saying I should use the clumsy keyword phrases that people are actually using as the back link text on (say) Directories?

I had thought of maybe leaving just one instance of each clumsy phrase on the page and then just include those words as they naturally fall on the page within proper context.

You see I NEED to feel there's some sense and structure behind all this, otherwise why bother to do much keyword research at all? To be ultra-competitive is the goal and I fear that takes a lot more than just writing well about a subject! Having identified the phrase "cancer bowel sign symptom" as an exact prase that people are using, with few competitive websites doing the same ... am I REALLY just supposed to let that go as a phrase and just drop those words in amongst text where it makes sense to do so?

Thanks to Torka & SmellieNellie for advice on keyword density ... I will take less notice of that now.

Regards
Adrian

Edited by OnlyTopResults, 21 July 2006 - 10:38 AM.

[torka]

OFFTOPIC:

the Quote function on this system is entirely different to any of the (many) others I subscribe to - and I've given up on how it's supposed to work! Intuitive it is not! Adrian -- to ease your frustration, here's a brief tutorial. Just click the far right button labeled "quote" under the post you want to quote from (the one with the quotation mark on it, not the one with the plus sign), or cut and paste the text you'd like to quote and enclose it in BBCode: CODE [quote]the text you want to quote[/quote] If you want to manually attribute the quote, it would be done like this (using the far right "quote" button fills in the quote attribution automatically): CODE [quote=source]the text you want to quote[/quote]

I'll let Michael handle your other question. I have the feeling your interpretation (if I'm reading the two of you correctly) isn't exactly what he was saying, but I'll leave that to him to clarify.

--Torka

[OnlyTopResults]

[offtopic]Adrian -- to ease your frustration, here's a brief tutorial. Just click the far right button labeled "quote" under the post you want to quote from (the one with the quotation mark on it, not the one with the plus sign), or cut and paste the text you'd like to quote and enclose it in BBCode:

Aha ... Michael's comment was in the middle of a few threads, so I was clicking on the link ABOVE his entry! Got it now.

Thanks - love your whirly hat!! I didn't see any of those when I was living in Charlotte, NC for all of '92 ... your neighbourhood I guess?

XX
Adrian

[torka]

OFFTOPIC:

Actually, Charlotte's a few hours away. Nice town, but I hardly ever get down that way. I'm in a small town (well, actually in a semi-rural area outside a small town) near Raleigh. --Torka

[Michael Martinez]

Michael Martinez made a very interesting point when he said:

"At some point, you find yourself competing for expressions where people are just being really artificial. In such cases, I think it would be better to build up linkage and let the artificiality hang in the collective anchor text.

Michael, are you saying I should use the clumsy keyword phrases that people are actually using as the back link text on (say) Directories?

I had thought of maybe leaving just one instance of each clumsy phrase on the page and then just include those words as they naturally fall on the page within proper context.

You see I NEED to feel there's some sense and structure behind all this, otherwise why bother to do much keyword research at all? To be ultra-competitive is the goal and I fear that takes a lot more than just writing well about a subject! Having identified the phrase "cancer bowel sign symptom" as an exact prase that people are using, with few competitive websites doing the same ... am I REALLY just supposed to let that go as a phrase and just drop those words in amongst text where it makes sense to do so?

Everyone ends up doing it their own way, to be honest. I'm working with a client right now who paid me for specific advice in mapping out a campaign but he's already starting to innovate. So you'll take what you see here and elsewhere and do your own thing.

That said, what I meant was that you can establish that your page is relevance for any number of keywords by using them in link anchor text. You don't have to use awkward phrases (in fact, I would advise against it) unless you are specifically targeting those phrases through what is called exact find search.

Let's say you feel people are searching for "monkey green pajamas". I mean, your research shows that they are literally typing that expression into search engine query tools.

If you want to optimize for that expression, you do not have to use it exactly unless you want to capture searches where people use quotes around their queries.

That is, monkey green pajamas is a very different search from "monkey green pajamas".

As you can see if you click on those links, you'll only get irrelevant advertising results from the second query because no one actually utilizes that expression in their content (not in anchor text or in on-page copy).

Without the quotes, the query is called a find all search, and it asks the search engine to find all pages that match all the terms in the query without regard for proximity or order. The major search engines, to one degree or another, may try to order results so that pages with that word order show up first. But they can be influenced by anchor text which only focuses on one word.

Dr. Edel Garcia of Mi Islita suggests that if you want to emphasize a multi-word expression, your best bet is to focus on the word which has the least frequent occurrence across the Web -- the rarest word in the group. In my example, the rarest word of the three (with respect to Ask's index) is "pajamas".

So, if you cannot incorporate the expression "green monkey pajamas" in your on-page or off-page copy without looking silly, then you can at least put a little more emphasis on "pajamas" and maybe go after "green monkey" in other ways.

Hence, some of your inbound link anchor text could use the words separately, some could use them in pairs, and if you really feel paranoid, some could use them all. To make it look natural to a random surfer, I would use a linking expression something along the lines of:

A page about green pajamas and monkeys.

Or:

A page about monkeys and green pajamas.

Because "and" is such a common word, it's less likely to cause any trouble by getting between the other words.

But this is all still artificial, in the sense that no one really discusses "monkey green pajamas". Since we're assuming that people search for these keywords, the underlying reason must be that they associate the words together as being important to some broader topic.

They might be trying to find a story they read once which mentioned a monkey and green pajamas.

They mighht be trying to find a list of gifts for a children who likes monkeys, whose favorite color is green, and who needs a pair of pajamas.

Keep in mind that queries may reflect a broad selection of motives among the searchers. They don't necessarily all want to find the exact same thing.

When you put links out in front of people, regardless of whether they are on someone else's site or in search results, you want those links to be naturally compelling. The people have to think, "Hm. This link may be relevant to my interests".

[OnlyTopResults]

Thanks Michael for a most comprehensive and helpful response. If I might follow through from what you have said and make my 'process' clearer?

... what I meant was that you can establish that your page is relevance for any number of keywords by using them in link anchor text.  You don't have to use awkward phrases (in fact, I would advise against it) unless you are specifically targeting those phrases through what is called exact find search.

OK - my understanding of the term "link anchor text" relates to the text link that appears in a Directory or blog, which brings the visitor back to the related landing page. I realise that ideally that should read as normal text, but let me explain the method I am using and perhaps you can see why I am keen to sort this in my head!

I am using a terrific program (which I recommend) called Keyword Analyzer. I allows me to do a broad search on a single word and brings back the most promising ones which then can be cherry-picked for deeper analysis. That analysis can be tuned to only search for competitor websites that have the keywords in place as identical phrases. In this way I have identified the (analogous) phrase "cancer bowel sign symptom" as being searched 536 times over the past 30 days (Overture data) with 62 competitor sites which also use that exact phrase. Let's ignore the 'hardness' of the numbers for the moment and just accept there are trends there somewhere.

KA allows me to dowload the key elements of the home pages for the Top 10 of these 62 competitor's sites and I can see that only 3 of them are using that term in the page Title, only one of those in a <H1> tag, and the highest PR is 3, with most being PR1 or PR2. Given all of the above, I figure MY chances of getting in the Top 10 for that phrase are pretty high (ignoring the back links issues, which will obviously need the benefit of further time and effort).

So THAT'S why I am being so focussed on whether or not to use that exact term. If I rearrange the phrase to say "signs and symptoms of bowel cancer" surely I throw away that advantage. I appreciate the 'stop' words won't count, but a different order of words must surely mean the term just won't pull the same traffic?

Do you see my difficulty?

Thanks
Adrian

P.S. Another issue is singular and plural instances of words - does Google 'see' and rank the singular when it sees the plural? Does "symptoms" cover "symptom" by default? This is another key issue I'd like to put to bed, once and for all!

Edited by OnlyTopResults, 21 July 2006 - 11:41 AM.

[Jill]

Does "symptoms" cover "symptom" by default?

Yes and No. Do a search at Google for each and you can see for yourself.

[Michael Martinez]

So THAT'S why I am being so focussed on whether or not to use that exact term. If I rearrange the phrase to say "signs and symptoms of bowel cancer" surely I throw away that advantage. I appreciate the 'stop' words won't count, but a different order of words must surely mean the term just won't pull the same traffic?

Do you see my difficulty?

I think you're overcomplicating your project for yourself. I won't make specific recommendations, as Jill doesn't like it when I suggest mechanical approaches that can be (and most likely are) abused or misused by people who don't really understand the process.

If you just create a page for the most natural phrase, you can gradually zero in on the top position as long as your competitors are not actively optimizing.

It doesn't sound like they are. So create good content, get it linked and crawled, and then make adjustments. It may be as simple as adding a few sentences, tacking on some more pages, changing a little layout, getting some links, etc.

You're paralyzing yourself with pre-emptive analysis.

At this point, you know what needs to be done. Just do it.

[OnlyTopResults]

I think you're overcomplicating your project for yourself.  I won't make specific recommendations, as Jill doesn't like it when I suggest mechanical approaches that can be (and most likely are) abused or misused by people who don't really understand the process.

Ah but that's my whole POINT Michael ... IS there a "process" (and does anybody outside of Google know what it really is?)

When setting up a PPC campaign it's necessary to specify whether a keyword term is to be broad matched, phrase matched or exact matched (as you know). So that tells me that phrase matching (as in my example "cancer bowel sign symptom") is regarded differently from just broad matching where any of the words, in any order, will satisfy the SE.

Anyway, I am disppointed that I can't get a detailed answer to my detailed question, so will just go back to throwing darts as best I can. At least I seem to have lost the blindfold that made it even more difficult.

Thanks
Adrian