Phrase vs Exact

[iRunThis]

Question, I have a keyword that I want to use, when I check the box for "Phrase" and the google keyword tool says 17k global monthly searches.

WhenI check [Exact] the same keyword gets 260 searches a month.

What's up with this? Can somebody explain this to me? If I rank in the first spot for this keyword, how much traffic can I expect?

[Maraun]

Exact searches is the amount of people searching for "dog food" when your keyword is dog food. Phrase searches is the amount of people searching for the sum of everything you can think of that has "dog food" somewhere in the keyword. For example "cheap dog food", "best dog food", "dog food for labs" and _everything_ else.

Now if there is there is a site optimized for "cheap dog food" and another site optimized for "dog food", guess which one both sites ranks higher for "cheap dog food"?

In summary, you keyword is commonly used as a part of longer search requests.

[UMS]

Always use the exact monthly figures as it will be much closer to the mark.

With phrase match, it can potentially include a lot of stuff you don't optimize for.

Let's take the example of: best vintage cars

The following are all phrase matches:

He bought five of the best vintage cars available.

She did what she thought was best. Vintage cars were never her thing.

The wine was definitely the best vintage. Cars had been arriving all day to pick them up.

The more words in your keyword phrase, generally the more variation you have, and the topics it covers broaden.

[iRunThis]

Thanks to both of you. For AdSense, I was testing out a guide found in the War Room "Easy Adsense Profits" and in his guide (Cool Hand Luke) he says to use "Phrase" for your keyword research which I didn't really understand but since he makes $5k/m from it from only 9 sites, why not follow step by step and see what I get.

At this point I'm thinking of completely refocusing the optimization of the site. I only have the first post of the site up now, I'm indexed by google, and I'm on page 2 in position 12 for my keyword in parenthesis.

Do you guys think it's a good idea to reoptimize before I get too deep in the on page SEO? Or would you say stick with it and see what kind of results I get?

This is my first time experimenting with Adsense so I'm not really sure what's best here.

[iRunThis]

BUMP!

If I should restart, I would like to start on the Keyword Research ASAP. I'm anxious to have my first AdSense success site up and running.

Also, does anybody know what kind of numbers I should expect if I stay with this keyword and site?

[MSC]

What do you mean by "re-optimize"? Change template, change layout, change adsense ads location?

[iRunThis]

Originally Posted by MSC

What do you mean by "re-optimize"? Change template, change layout, change adsense ads location?

No no no, sorry for the misunderstanding.

My site is already perfectly optimized for search engines. What I meant by that was to unsticky the main post, and look for a different main keyword in the same niche. But first I wanted to figure out what kind of traffic I could expect if I rank for that keyword.

[MSC]

You can leave sticky the main post, though you should try to rank pages not posts.

How many exact searches got your keyword?

[iRunThis]

Originally Posted by MSC

You can leave sticky the main post, though you should try to rank pages not posts.

How many exact searches got your keyword?

Ok. It's in the OP, the [Exact] keyword has only 260 searches.

[MSC]

Sorry missed it

If 260 exact searches and ranks #1 it would be ~100 visitors per month.

[rivie0020]

I think is best to concentrate on the exact search keyword, then search google for other phrases to use as anchor text