when analyzing top 10 traffic, use broad, phrase, or exact.

[yunie6]

as titled.
let say if we search for, delicious chocolate cookies, the results for top 10 will of course be different if we search for "delicious chocolate cookies" or [delicious chocolate cookies].

so which top 10 traffic should we analyse?

[johnhoefer]

I use exact so my expectations are not unrealistically high. I use the difference between exact and phrase to discover how many other long tail opportunities there are.

[Giani]

I use phrase, that is, "delicious chocolate cookies"

[yukon]

Use exact search, since that's what your targeting. The broad long-tails will happen on their own as your site grows with new pages.

[WCRocket]

Exact match can help you find keywords that are easy to rank for, but don't limit yourself to only exact. By using broad as a comparison to exact match results, you can figure which keywords are strong in both exact and broad. This is called the phrase-to-broad ratio. The higher the ratio, the more searches you can expect for the term.

[dburk]

Hi yunie6,

When looking at keyword search data using Google's keyword tool you should take note that Exact, Phrase and Broad match types have absolutely nothing to do with whether someone searched with quotes or not. Those are two completely different things. Those different match types are for different methods of triggering ads, nothing to do with how someone searches.

If you are trying to find how much search traffic there is for a particular keyword then you need to stick with exact match data only. Phrase match data includes search traffic data from many other keywords, those that happen to contain the same root word. Broad match includes search data from keywords that can be created by any combination of those words along with many other words that may sound similar or have vaguely related meanings.

[Mike McAleer]

I think phrase searches are a good middleground to analyze. Otherwise you would be too specific or too general...

[yunie6]

i think many misunderstood my question. this has nothing to do with google keyword tool. what I am trying to say is that when searching for a particular term, e.g.
delicious chocolate cake
"delicious chocolate cake"
[delicious chocolate cake] (on google itself not on the keyword tool)

all 3 will come back with different results. which result should i analyse for SEO competition?

P.S anyway i did a more thorough search and realised that most, if not all, normal searchers search without any quotes or brackets. So I assume i should analyse the delicious chocolate cake result for SEO competition

[dburk]

Originally Posted by yunie6

i think many misunderstood my question. this has nothing to do with google keyword tool. what I am trying to say is that when searching for a particular term, e.g.
delicious chocolate cake
"delicious chocolate cake"
[delicious chocolate cake] (on google itself not on the keyword tool)

all 3 will come back with different results. which result should i analyse for SEO competition?

P.S anyway i did a more thorough search and realised that most, if not all, normal searchers search without any quotes or brackets. So I assume i should analyse the delicious chocolate cake result for SEO competition

Hi yunie6,

Since you used terms and formatting that only applies to the Google keyword tool, I assumed that was what you were asking about.

You are correct in your realization that nearly all searches are done without quotes so that should be your target. A phrase search, done by using quotes, returns the same results, but with a filter applied that filters out any results that do not contain the phrase within the quotes.