Why should we use "Quotes" for keyword research?

LOL of course most people don't use them...

the quotes are to know who are the real competitors, those targeting that key phrase specifically.

you don't usually use quotes when looking at searches per month, etc... only on the organic side.

Makes sense?

Laura

Well with the quotes you get a better match.. "red widgets" would return pages with the words exactly like that.

With no quotes you might get a page that says:

"Red here... I was thinking other day about blue widgets"


But I see your point... people do search without quotes often. Your competition is both with the pages that have red widgets on them and perhaps, as far as getting eyes on your page, with those that rank well without quotes.

I know this goes against popular opinion, but you shouldn't use quotes. You want to know what your customer actually SEES when they look something up, right? How many people do you know who look things up in quotes? I know of exactly none.

This is one of those ridiculous things that supposed experts keep saying and if you asked them why, they probably wouldn't even know.

Just my two-opinionated-cents.

Doing keyword research with and without quotes are both important.

Without Quotes:

Obviously because as you have pointed out - most people do not include quotes in their searches, this type of research is important for obvious reasons.

With Quotes:

A "red widgets" keyword research would give you access to your real competitors - i.e. the people that are actual COMPETITION . This way you can not only spy on your real competitors but also c your rankings in relation to them. So this is Reason 1.

Reason 2:

Google algorithms pay alot of attention to search relevance , therefore sites optimized for "red widgets" are 8-10 times more likely (keeping other factors constant) to rank high than sites optimized for .... "red is a good color..... and widgets suck" ......


Therefore doing a with and without quotes research gives you a much more complete picture of the overall scenario and gives you the right insight into your REAL competition.

Hope this helps ..... I am sure other people will come upo with additional logic too!

That has cleared it up for me now, as I don't know anyone who
uses quotes when typing in a keyword.

I now know the real purpose behind quotation marks.

Mark

Welcome to our minority club! You are correct. I'd rather be top of the serp's for what people actually search for and optimize accordingly. No point sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the real competition But it's not worth arguing with the 'flat earth society' Anyway, it's less competition for us

using quotes is very necessory but lots of people dont use them.people do search without quotes often.Your competition is both with the pages that have red widgets on them and perhaps, as far as getting eyes on your page, with those that rank well without quotes.i always use quotes and i know the importance of quotes

It is just a more accurate number for comparison with other numbers like it.

Of course most of your prospects search without quotes, but they get a lot of noise in their results. That's just fine for them, but you need accurate data to make accurate decisions.

The quotes give you more accurate and repeatable data that isn't noisy from all of the cross matches with other topics.

Having read your previous replies in the thread now (flat earth society... :rolleyes: )... I'm not sure it's even worth discussing with you...

Seriously..

If a page doesn't appear for a phrase when I search with quotes, then I really don't need to worry about it.

They aren't my competition, they are simply filling space because they happen to contain my keywords in their pages. The only thing I need to worry about, is pages that contain my exact keyphrase.

Peace

Jay

LOL John. I simply use a different method to come up with the same results, really.

2+2+2+2 and 4x2 both still equal 8, right?

Meanwhile, back at the farm....

Matt, search this to understand better.

"red widgets = 1,000,000 competing pages"

{sits back with popcorn & soda}

Lol this is hilarious. A debate on using quotes or no quotes. So pointless ...

You guys need to stop focusing on quotes and start using different advanced operators like: intitle:"keyword" inanchor:"keyword"

The "title tag" is one of the most important SEO factors if not the most important for ranking for a particular keyword.

It looks like people are still doing the same old rehashed keyword research that's been passed around the net for years now.

Holy crap, I go away to write a couple of articles and come back to all these great responses.

What a forum, Thanks guys

Honestly I dont under stand why so many people care about the amount of sites with our without quotes? No matter is there is 150,000 sites with the exact keyword phrase or if there is 5,000,000 sites with the broad phrase. It all comes down to how is ranking for basically the top 5 sites. There are tons of keywords that only have 50k exact matching competitors that you have no chance in competing with. It all depends on how well the top 4 or 5 sites are established and if they are actually trying to compete for that keyword phrase or if they are just ranking because of mentioning it a few times on their site.

For example: if you take the phrase "blue coffee makers" and look at the top 5 competing sites and all of them are nextag and amazon etc that are ranking just because they have so much authority already and have it listed on their site you can easily outrank them by having the keyword in your domain especially if you can find an aged domain that was indexed by Google so many years back.

Now on the other hand if you have Bluecoffemakers.com ranking number one and they have 6,000 inbound links and its done by someone how knows SEO then your going to have a very hard time to rank number one for this term. No matter if it has 1 million sites with the phrase or just 100.

Best rule of thumb is to also shoot for keywords who the top 4 or 5 sites that are ranking for it to be less than a PR3 for the indexed page that is ranking for that term. If the keyword your targeting has the exact phrase as a dot com in the top four then dont bother unless the person doesnt have a clue about seo and you should be able to tell.

Anyway that is my two cents and is a easy way to determine a keywords competition. And you will also notice that most of the keywords that you find that are under those guidelines will end up having low competition.

Any questions just PM me....

Jason

I could personally care less about in quotes out of quotes or otherwise. I honestly find them all pretty useless, I wouldn't attempt a niche based on any results they gave me.

I look for strength of actual competition, inanchor etc is pretty useful or decent tools such as MNF or MS are a good help but once MNF or MS finds me something half decent, I actually switch to manual mode, check carefully the top 10 with inanchor and a few other tools and work from there.