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Why a problem with phrase match vs broad match?

by TinPete
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi Everyone,

I asked this in another post, but everyone just said I need more backlinks and never actually explained what is happening for me, so forgive me if it seems like I am repeating myself.

My website, curetotinnitus(dot)org is currently rated #1 on page 1 of google for:
"Cure to tinnitus" (with the quotes)

But my site does not show up at all for the broad match:
Cure to Tinnitus (without quotes)

It's no where in 65 *pages* of search results!

In that amount of pages, there are plenty of pages that have far less content than mine, and very few of them have the actual words in the actual order.

My question: When someone types in broad match search term like:
cure to tinnitus

Does google remove the "little words" like (to, from, your, by, the, for, etc) so that in it's eyes the search is really just for:
cure tinnitus?

I need to understand how this works, because I may have made a mistake in selecting my keywords and I don't want this to happen again.

If google reads the broad term (cure to tinnitus) as (cure tinnitus) I am probably out of my league and that explains why I am not showing up.

Thanks!

- Pete
#broad #match #phrase #problem
  • Profile picture of the author animesh
    If google reads the broad term (cure to tinnitus) as (cure tinnitus) I am probably out of my league and that explains why I am not showing up.
    AS I know, "to" is a STOP WORD and Google never consider stop word, so your statement might be right that Google read broad term CURE TO TINNITUS as CURE TINNITUS.
    That also is the reason why your sites ranked well for "phrase match" and not for broad match.
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  • Profile picture of the author TinPete
    Wow.

    Thanks, animesh.

    Being new to all this, I've never heard of "stop words" before.

    If I understand this correctly, this explains all of my frustrations and just completely changed my view of how to do keywords.

    I've just started digging and found a site that lists the most common stop words:
    Online SEO Guide: Google Stop Words - A Comprehensive List Of Words Google Ignores

    Just to make sure I've got the concept, lets say "How to win at poker" has a good number of searches and I want to explore this further.

    Since "How" "To" and "At" are all stop words, to truly evalate what it will take to rank for this phrase, I should see what the competition for the broad phase "win poker" is, right?

    Thanks!

    - Pete
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    • Profile picture of the author jack jastin
      Originally Posted by TinPete View Post

      Wow.

      Thanks, animesh.

      Being new to all this, I've never heard of "stop words" before.

      If I understand this correctly, this explains all of my frustrations and just completely changed my view of how to do keywords.

      I've just started digging and found a site that lists the most common stop words:
      Online SEO Guide: Google Stop Words - A Comprehensive List Of Words Google Ignores

      Just to make sure I've got the concept, lets say "How to win at poker" has a good number of searches and I want to explore this further.

      Since "How" "To" and "At" are all stop words, to truly evalate what it will take to rank for this phrase, I should see what the competition for the broad phase "win poker" is, right?

      Thanks!

      - Pete
      Okay, Stop words are basically, The most frequently used words in any of the content like "The, Is, There" etc that is to be avoided in the keywords because search engine never indexes these stop words.
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