by Epidot
5 replies
When using the Google keyword tool, I know were supposed to check that keyword in google in quotes but I cannot understand why.

I know that you can drill down as far as inurl:"keyword" intitle"keyword" in order to locate competition that is targeting that exact keyword, but here's the thing.

EVERY time i search in google for my keyword without quotes (which is what your target audience do.. without quotes) the websites i found in quotes.. in URL and in Title NEVER show on the front page..sometimes i cant find them at all

Most the time the highest ranking sites on Google won't even have the keyword phrase in the title or page at all.

So can someone explain why we are supposed to target keywords and use quotes when the results dont show that it actually matters?

It seems that the pagerank wins hands down over everything else..

And to add to my concern, if the sites that i saw when using quotes cant actully be found with a standard search. Then I figure that my website could rank absolutely anywhere in the 4,000,000 results google has... and probably wont get to page 1 at all unless i get page rank 2 or more?
#keywords #quotes
  • Profile picture of the author Rus Sells
    Searching in quotes gives you the number of competing pages for that term. It helps you gauge the level of difficulty to rank for that term.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7030877].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Epidot
      but that's just my point. If these competing sites for that term are themselves not anywhere to be seen when searching google without quotes, then i dont see it being successful for me either

      i'm more so talking about long tail keywords like HOW TO DO......or similar
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7030905].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author IM Nick
    Instead of checking competition that way you should check the onpage SEO of each website in the top 10. Then check the backlinks, anchor text of backlinks, and overall quality of backlinks. This will give you a much better idea of what your up against.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7030917].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author cferfland247
    wont get to page 1 at all unless i get page rank 2 or more?
    There is no relation between page rank and SERP position. SERP position depends on your content quality, links back to the content page and social signal.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7031024].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    Hi

    Using quotes in Google is just one piece of checking competition. It can give you a quick overview of whether a niche/keyword is very competitive.

    In your example, when you use quotes to see what sites are optimized for the keyword compared to what sites rank without the quotes, you can look at the sites to see:

    What are non-optimized sites doing that make them rank?
    What are the optimized site doing/not doing that is causing them not to rank?

    It could be that the niche is very competitive and non-optimized sites are ranking because they are authority sites, have lots of backlinks, social signals or other off-page SEO.

    It could also be that the niche is not competitive at all and Google is just showing what it can find and the difference between quotes and no quotes is caused by negligible factors.

    You need to reverse engineer the competition in any niche. Sometimes using quotes in a search gives a good idea whether a niche is competitive or not. Sometime you need to dig deeper into your analysis of competing pages.

    Mahlon
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7031219].message }}

Trending Topics