Is my LOGIC way off base? for KWR

[Dano1981]

hello warriors

I have a delima/conundrum

I have been reading and searching for the right way to do keyword search, and I mean an awful lot of time dedicated to this endeavor over weeks and months...there are as many opinions on this topic as there are posters! then again a few methods seem the most suggested

in regards to google serps for checking my competition, I've placed much thought into; Do I use no quotes, or do I use "quotes" or do a I use Allintitle or "allintitle with quotes"

then I thought to myself

"the most important thing I need to know is how a surfer will most likely conduct his search? RIGHT? or NO?

I mean doesn't it all come down to whether he/she places "quotes" around his search or not? and shouldn't I be basing my efforts on the top 10 for each way, "with" and "without quotes"? to understand or capture both groups? or even one "properly" (in parity)and (if I may ask) why the need to search for "allintitle" when the surfer isn't going to look in the serps for "allintitle" results anyway?

and in parity shouldn't I match that with the same search logic in the google keyword tool? one with quotes, and one without quotes? in other words "match up" the tool type search "quotes" against the same type of serps "quotes" YES? logic? or NO?

I've heard that "allintitle" carries more weight, but wouldn't that only make a difference if your "top 10 serps" have the keywords in their titles specifically?

of course I realize there are other things that determine rank; niche, type of sites, articles(directory), pr rank, age of site etc.,...)


this seems so obvious, but granted I'm the "novice" with an "untrained outlook" eye, but no one mentions this search methology? or maybe I should call it "no brainer" maybe it's so "assumed" that people glance over the point?, or maybe I should assume that this is not an accurate way to look at things? but yet logic tells me is it correct... can you tell me why this is not accurate then? because "logic" escapses me......

(I'm one confused puppy! arrf arff!)
I'm really curious about your thoughts

thanks very much and Holiday cheer!!! !

Dano~

[PhoebeSmellyCat]

I'm no expert by any means but I think the quotes and allintitle, allinurl is so that you would know what you need to do to rank high in the search engines for that particular keyword and not about something a user would put in the search field.

I would want my site on the first page because unless I was desperate, I wouldn't go checking page 2 and on.

I'm sure the experts will have more to add to this and I could be wrong, as I am a newbie...

[David Louis Monk]

I suppose it all comes down to how much competion there is for the keyword or phrase. Where you have competition for the same keywords then the websites with the highest backlink score based on quantity and ranking of the backlinks is likely to get the higher listing in Google.
Single keywords will be sown up such that you will never rank higher than the big boys who have multiple sites linking with each other and you will never out-rank them.


Back linking is not a substitute of haThe longer the keyword phrase and the less competion there is the more likely your are to suceed. Whilst some do not place much store in backlinks, many do. You need to know which sites to get links from which Google rank highly; for that will give your backlink a higher score. Not forgetting a good quality score for your website is based on content and meeting the new rules Google have put in place.

[magicmarcus]

i think more important than how the user searches is WHY the user searches.

mindset is everything... i think far to many people get hung up on allintitle and competition and all that stuff... and it can be important.

but if you start thinking less about ranking and more about what you can offer people... then the world of keywords that have very very little competition will open up to you and your conversions will go thru the roof.

this is hands down 100% what i attribute to be the most important thing in my 10 year internet marketing career

[Steven Fullman]

Originally Posted by Dano1981

hello warriors


"the most important thing I need to know is how a surfer will most likely conduct his search? RIGHT? or NO?

thanks very much and Holiday cheer!!! !

Dano~

Hi Dano,

Right! You *absolutely should* think about how and what people are searching for...and try to rank for those phrases.

You seem smart, so I guess you're not going to rank for terms like "vacation, golf, cats" etc...because a) they're too generic, b) they're too difficult, and c) they won't make you any cash.

But...phrases like: a) "February vacations in the South of France", b) "How to drive 260 yards with a 7 iron!", and c) "Why is my cat always hungry?" ...are specific, easy to rank for, and answer people's needs (people are willing to pay for answers to their needs!)

Great foresight, mate.

Cheers,
Steve

[Dano1981]

all 4 of you, thank you very much for taking your time and replying
I really appreciate it!

so then I might say "allintitle" is important because it carries weight
and can certainly help rank...

however since surfers don't themselves use "allintitle" can you explain in brevity the "balance" between this paradox ? and if possible explaining it in a palatable "bite size" way for comprehension purposes?

because I'm just not quite getting why we're not "catering" to the same way a surfer searches? and using that as our benchmark? (hope that made sense!)

thank you very much again

dano~

[PhoebeSmellyCat]

Originally Posted by Dano1981

all 4 of you, thank you very much for taking your time and replying
I really appreciate it!

so then I might say "allintitle" is important because it carries weight
and can certainly help rank...

however since surfers don't themselves use "allintitle" can you explain in brevity the "balance" between this paradox ? and if possible explaining it in a palatable "bite size" way for comprehension purposes?

because I'm just not quite getting why we're not "catering" to the same way a surfer searches? and using that as our benchmark? (hope that made sense!)

thank you very much again

dano~

I think it's because we have to cater to how Google searches.

[Dano1981]

ok phoebe,

(I'm assuming you are a tenured marketer who's purview/paradigm is from that of an experienced marketer rather than it being supposition from one that doesn't truly have "experience", and I say that respectfully by the way!)

So let's say I get your point...let me ask you

let's say that surfers never use "quotes" we'll postulate that

if I go to google keyword tool and do my keyword search, and I make sure I DO NOT USE "exact match" then I take those same keywords and do a search on google to see what my SERPs are (referring to top 10) so why not conduct my serps check the same way "without quotes" then focus on what is returned, and see what variables are causing them to rank?

and conversely wouldn't I do the same, and be further ahead if we then run by the assumption that the surfer is using "quotes" and then I follow in kind, and do a repeat, but this time basing my serp's using "quotes" why wouldn't that be a grounded approach?

thanks again

dano

edit: sorry phoebe just reread your 1st above post and saw you and I are still learning! so please forgive the "experienced marketer" mention...my bad!

Originally Posted by PhoebeSmellyCat

I think it's because we have to cater to how Google searches.

[David Louis Monk]

All in the title has a lot of merit as this has certainly helped rank the few sites I have; not that these sites all have 100s and 1000s of competitors competing for the same keywords or phrases.

I am only just starting to use Adwords and have been put off by how expensive it is to use Adwords but their $100 coupon has persuaded me to try Adwords.

"All in the title" does help with Google ads. The more you can use the keyword in the title etc the more Google will see relevancy. It is worth finding out what you have to do to get a good Google quality score for your website as this can dramatically reduce your Google Adwords advertising costs if you want to drive traffic to your site instead of waiting to get on the first page of Google orgainically.

As you will find out from this forum there are ways to get to the first page of Google without having to worry too much about keywords.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Dano1981

ok phoebe,

(I'm assuming you are a tenured marketer who's purview/paradigm is from that of an experienced marketer rather than it being supposition from one that doesn't truly have "experience", and I say that respectfully by the way!)

So let's say I get your point...let me ask you

let's say that surfers never use "quotes" we'll postulate that

if I go to google keyword tool and do my keyword search, and I make sure I DO NOT USE "exact match" then I take those same keywords and do a search on google to see what my SERPs are (referring to top 10) so why not conduct my serps check the same way "without quotes" then focus on what is returned, and see what variables are causing them to rank?

and conversely wouldn't I do the same, and be further ahead if we then run by the assumption that the surfer is using "quotes" and then I follow in kind, and do a repeat, but this time basing my serp's using "quotes" why wouldn't that be a grounded approach?

thanks again

dano

edit: sorry phoebe just reread your 1st above post and saw you and I are still learning! so please forgive the "experienced marketer" mention...my bad!

Hi Dano1981,

I think you are looking at all these things in the wrong way. There are many ways to slice data and each way tells you a different thing. SEO pros don't look at search results using quotes except to see which results are returned for the precise phrase. This is usually done to get a general ideal of the scale of potential competition. It's not real actual competition. It's not even close to understanding the real competition. That is why allintitle is usually used to get a better ideal of how many pages are actually targeting a particular keyword enough to have included it in the page title, which is much more meaningful. It has absolutely nothing to do with how other people search (with quotes or not).

You need to bear in mind that you may have serious competition from pages that haven't included the keyword in the page title. That's why you may want to look at inurl, intext and inanchor data as well. When you look at all of the slices of data, in context, you get a better ideal of the scale and to some degree the strength of competition. To get the full picture you also need to analyse the backlinks for relevance and strength.

When using data from keyword tools, you should only use EXACT match data to research an individual keyword. Broad match and Phrase match include data from many other keywords besides the one you are researching and isn't as useful.

When looking for more keywords to potentially target you can use phrase match or broad match to get ideals for more keywords to target. However, the data doesn't reflect searches for a single keyword, instead it is data for a range of keywords.

[miklanderson2]

Dano1981 - When researching keywords, take a look at both the competition with the keyword in quotes and the competition on page 1 of Google with no quotes. Ideally, you want to rank on page 1 of Google for no quotes. That's the way most people search. What I've found is that if you can get your site ranked on page 1 when searching using quotes, chances are it's going to rank on page 1 without quotes as well.

As far as research goes, I personally take a quick glance at the all in URL and all in title of the competition just to see where I'm at, but I pay more attention to the PR and the number of backlinks the sites I'm going to have to beat on page 1 have. I also take a glance at the pages themselves to see how optimized these pages are for the keyword I'm targeting. If page 1 looks weak, I know I can rank for it regardless of the in title and in URL counts.

[pons_saravanan]

Hi

I am not a SEO Expert. But these are all what i have learned along the way.

Title and URL are the one of the basic on page factors for search engines to rank the pages.

ALLinTitle will list you how many pages are well optimized with all keywords in title
ALLinURL will list you how many pages are well optimized with all keywords in URL

To my understandings, actually the number of resutls matters. may not be the actual results

It is one of the metric to identify the competition for the keyword phrase in terms of On Page SEO

[slashman]

Hi,

There was a post above that had the answer, but I just thought I would chime in anyway...

You use the quote and other modified searches to find the strength of your competition. Use these modifiers to see how many webmasters are using your exact key words in their title, anchor, URL, etc...

As a single person performing SEO on your own sites, these are really your only methods of guaranteeing high ranking. If there is no competition, you will rank well with little more then creating content and using proper on page optimization methods.

While conducting research also consider the plain search without quotes or modifiers because this is exactly what your potential visitors will see. If the serps are packed with high authority sites like about.com, wiki, or any of these big guys, you will have a hard time beating them whether they follow all the on page optimization strategies. They don't have to build links to their pages either because they just have natural authority through their brand names (and naturally linking to their great content.)

Thanks,

George