I dont see the point of exact or phrase match keywords??

[Rich Jackson]

ok I've been online for quite a while..i'm making a really good income in and out of the IM niche.

out of the im niche all of my income is through SEO and email marketing...somehow i make it work for me.

BUT, for the life of me i cant wrap my head around this thought/question.

Why should i target exact or phrase match keywords when normal people only search using the broad format.

example...(these numbers are purely made up)

blue widget broad search = 21,000,000 competing pages
blue widget "phrase" search = 113,000 competing webpages
blue widget [exact] search = 41,000 competing pages.

so obvious the exact search is the easier site to compete in. but what i dont understand is "why is this important if people only type the broad form of the word"... which means if im competing for the exact match word technically im still competing with the broad match and the phrase match.

somehow ive been able to succeed without knowing this but its driving me crazy ...someone please explain????????

[DNChamp]

Well remember this, when searching on Google in the url box and you type in say BLUE SOCKS and comes back with 21,250,000 results. All that means all the searching it did brought back websites that have the word BLUE and the word SOCKS together somehow either together or mixed with other words in the title of the website.

It does not mean though that 21,250,000 people are looking for BLUE SOCKS that is where the EXACT results come in to play and THAT is the amount of people looking for that particular key word structure.

[bestrevenueshare]

I don't think so, we have to face much less competition for exact or phrase keywords and more importantly exact and phrase keywords provides more accurate data.

But for high level webmasters it is better to follow broad, I mean they can compete with great number of backlinks and content.

[Rich Jackson]

correct i understand that...but thats where the problem starts.. even if i type in

get blue widgets google is still going to give me the "broad results" but if i type in [get blue widgets] then google will give me the exact search results...but no non internet marketer ever uses [] when they are searching so whats the benefit of trying to optimize your site for exact keywords??

[Rich Jackson]

anybody have any input

[UMS]

When you do a Google search, there are only two search types:

1. Broad (without quotes)
2. Phrase (with quotes)

Typing the keywords in [] is the same as a broad match search as the square brackets are ignored.


The big thing to remember is that when you are doing a broad match search, Google is still going to give you best results related to your search query.

So if you search for

cheap car insurance

Google is going to return you sites that are optimized for that exact phrase. Once you start going further down the SERPs, you'll see matches that aren't for that exact phrase.

Some sites may have optimized for (hypothetical of course):

car insurance for cheap people

which would be included as a broad match for

cheap car insurance

but it definitely wouldn't appear at the top of the SERPs for people searching for those keywords.

[Dele]

Originally Posted by Rich Jackson

correct i understand that...but thats where the problem starts.. even if i type in

get blue widgets google is still going to give me the "broad results" but if i type in [get blue widgets] then google will give me the exact search results...but no non internet marketer ever uses [] when they are searching so whats the benefit of trying to optimize your site for exact keywords??

The answer to your question is as explained by UMS i.e. ORDER in which the presented sites in the SERP's appear. The sites ranking for the exact match terms that the search engine user types in, will appear first, ahead of the sites ranking for other broad terms having the exact match term as components.

The implication is that if you were using the broad term to judge your competition and so deciding to rank or not for it, in most cases it would be considerably over-inflated as others not really trying to rank for those exact terms will be included and you may make a wrong decision of not trying to rank for a term that actually has low competition or vice versa.

But if you use the exact match to determine your TRUE competition and the search engine user types in your exact search term (even though as a broad term i.e. without quotes), your site that is highly optimized and ranking high will feature in the SERP's ahead of other sites that are also equally highly optimized and ranking high otherwise, but not for those exact search terms.

Hope that explains it.

[Loloy Diango]

Hi Rich,

If you're referring to competition volume, match type results (broad, phrase or exact) doesn't really matter as you should only be concerned with how strong your competition is on the first page of the SERPs.

I would happily go for a keyword with a few million competing pages but with the first page showing sites that have weak on-page and off-page infrastructure than the other way around.

If you're referring to search volume, though, then you would be gunning for keywords that have decent search traffic on exact match setting. That would be a fairly accurate measure of the real amount of traffic such keywords get for any given period of time.

Hope this helps.