How do I target a specific phrase?

How long is the phrase?
Is the search volume even worth it?

Yahoo Answers
Page Title
Domain Name (.com and only if it is short enough)
Article Marketing

For on page optimization, you can integrate "new york coffee distributor" in the domain name, title tag (make it at the beginning of the title and make your title less than 60 characters) , meta keywords, headers. Most importantly, it is recommended to put the keywords at the beginning of the content of the web page as search engine crawlers were designed give more weight to the words at the beginning of specific indexed content. For off page optimization, yes you are right, it's better to have hyperlink (backlink with anchor text for keywords "new york coffee distributor") to link to your website. Try to make your anchor text with your exact keywords and also synonym and LSI keywors. Diversify your anchor texts in your backlinks can make it look natural to search engines. I hope I have helped a little bit...

Yes, you are right; targeting specific phrase means keep this phrase as hyper link and navigate this phrase in your website. Keep it in meta tags and description as well.

It is depend on lots of things. you can optimize long tail keywords by using forum signature, social bookmarking, article submission, writing blog etc.

Hi oneano

Everyone probably approaches this in their own way, but here's what I do...

Step 1 - Keyword Research

First be very sure you're happy with your keyword research - this will make or break you

Assuming your phrase is 'new york coffee distributor' we have:

Exact competition (keyword in quotes) = 1 (oooh good)
# Searches per month = 3,000 (good if it's exact, ok for phrase)
Average Page rank of the first 10 Google results (from SEO quake) = 1.9 (19/10)

So, assuming the search volumes are correct it should be a good keyword.

Step 2 - On page SEO

Set your page up correctly.

I use a checklist I created myself from a mash of a few systems.

I'm not sure I am allowed to post a link to it here (it's on my blog post) but I'll add a link to a post in my signature for a couple of days so you can have a read.

Essentially it's a checklist of the following:

Keyword is the name of the post eg: new-york-coffee-distributor.html
Keyword in title (at the beginning) eg: New York Coffee Distributor Guide
Keyword in description & keyword meta tags
Keyword in <h1> & <h2> tags
Keyword in first 50 words of the article
Keyword 4-5 times in a 400-500 word article
Keyword bolded once
Keyword italicised
Keyword in last sentence
Keyword linked to blog/website homepage
Keyword linked to the article ie: to itself
Keyword as the name of one image eg: new-york-coffee-distributor.jpg

Step 3 - Off Page SEO

Get backlinks to your article.

Quality is WAY more important than quantity. I rank for a keyword with 12,000 searches per month with fewer than 50 backlinks and I only did 10 of those myself.

Write 2 new articles about your topic and post to EzineArticles.com with the keyword
- in the title
- in the description
- REALLY IMPORTANTLY in the anchor text at the bottom of your signature

These articles must be different from each other and from the one posted on your website.

Create 2-3 short videos (can just be talking through the article) and post to YouTube with a link back to your website/blog post.

Create a Squidoo lens or Hubpage if you are really keen making sure the link back to your blog/website uses your keyword as the anchor text for the link back.

At this point you should be checking your rankings in something like the free SEO tool from TrafficTravis.com and you'll get an idea of how successful your work has been so far.

If you read my blog post you'll see I was even a bit slacker and didn't do all of this and still managed to beat out Wiki answers to the #1 spot for that keyword!

A couple more points to note on my own page:
- The page had a page rank of 0 when I started all of this so if you pick the right keywords you don't need any PR to rank well
- It was also a new domain (registered about 2 months before I started the backlinks)
- All of the backlinks I created used the exact same anchor text (ones other people did may not have because I didn't have any control over them)
- Only one of the words in my keyword phrase was in the domain name eg: my phrase was 'how to breed worms' and domain was 'EasyWormFarming.com (I made that one up but hopefully that explains what I mean)

Hope that helps.

Any questions feel free to ask

Libby