HELP ! ... Keyword Query That's Driving Me Nuts !

[hjm218]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is a no brainer to you, but it's been driving me crazy !

I've been learning how to find keywords or phrases which have a
good number of searches with low competition, but I'm having
trouble getting my head round one point.

I'm gonna use the phrase - quick weight loss diet as an example.
(I'm not actually using this, it's just an example for this query)

When I do a search on google using this phrase, the competition
number is 15,400,000.

When I do a search using quotes "quick weight loss diet" to find
out how much competition there is for this exact phrase, the
number is 147,000. This is the number of sites which contain that
exact phrase, so this must be my real competition, right ?

Now, the thing I can't get my head round is this....

If a potential buyer does a search on google using the phrase
quick weight loss diet, then they will see 15,400,000 other
other competitors. I know that there is only 147,000 using this
exact phrase, but most people searching the internet won't
be using quotes and actually typing in "quick weight loss diet"
will they ?

People searching on google will just type in the phrase without
quotes so 15,400,000 other sites will appear.

Does this make sense ? Can someone please explain this to me
before I go mad.

Thanks for reading my post

John

[Jeremy Kelsall]

John, you use the quotes because it essentially allows you to see how many sites are optimized for that particular phrase and have the EXACT phrase that you are targeting.

Most people do not search with quotes. When you do this, you are only concerned with seeing what kind of competition you are up against that is targeting the exact phrase.

Another thing to keep in mind is the strength of the competing sites.

1. Are they authority sites?
2. How many backlinks to they have?
3. Are they being updated often?
4. What are they selling?
5. Where do most of their links come from?

These are all things that you want to look at when considering a keyword phrase. Picking the right keywords can get you sales overnight. Pick the wrong ones and you could be wondering three weeks from now why you have not had a sale.

Jeremy

[JJOrana]

Hi John.

To make it easier for you. Forget the double quotes thing.

Search your target keyword without quotes and then see the top 20 websites and see if you can beat them.

If they are like MFA sites, you can easily boot them out.

[Rick67]

I am not quite sure just what your question is. Your observations are right.

quick weight loss diet without the quotes brings up all websites that contain those words but not in that order.
For example:

fast weight loss diet plans - quick weight loss diets, low ...

That is why there is more competition.

I guess your real question is whether or not you will get ranked for these key words when users use quotes.

Did you do keyword research to see how many searches are performed for this phrase with quotes and without?

If you are using PPC, then you can definitely use quotes in your PPC backend and only capture those who key in the phrase exactly like quick weight loss diet without any quotes.

Someone can jump in and correct me if I am wrong: Perhaps in your content you can insert "quick weight loss diet" with quotes and see if the search engines will rank you higher for that.

Rick

[hjm218]

Thanks for that.

I believed that using quotes showed the real competition,
but from what you've said this is not the case. The real
competition is actually shown by NOT using quotes ?

[rosetrees]

Results with quotes contain the exact phrase. Results without quotes contain all, or some, of the words but not necessarily next to each other.

The results with quotes should appear in the search result before the results without quotes.

So in your example, the searcher will have to wade through 147,000 results before reaching the results that just contain one or more of the words in the search string.

So you'd only have 147k pages to beat to get to the no1 spot!

[cupbucket]

all good answers. Listen to them

[Ricter]

Originally Posted by JJOrana

Hi John.

To make it easier for you. Forget the double quotes thing.

Search your target keyword without quotes and then see the top 20 websites and see if you can beat them.

If they are like MFA sites, you can easily boot them out.

What is MFA?

[kkchoon]

Search engine will show general and "non optimize" site's result because it has more authority (and Page Rank) for the related terms.

If you optimize the long tail version of the keyword, and build your back links from related sites, and when you receive enough authority, your page will be rank for the keyword instead of "non optimize" site, and I bet you require less back links to rank when your site are optimized for that keyword!