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Newbie Keyword Research Question - Keywords With or Without " " (quotes) ?

by mnguyen04
8 replies
hi guys

so in doing keyword research in all those sites and tools people recommend, is there an option to separate results for keywords without putting them in quotes " " as well as with quotes " ".

Clearly without quotes returns many more search results and daily/monthly user searches.

When you use keywords in social bookmarking and articles, are those keywords considered in quotes or not?

thanks all!!
#keyword #keywords #newbie #question #quotes #research
  • Profile picture of the author Gclunis
    The in quote results is you estimated competition for that keyword. All keywords are considered without quotes by search engines because that is the way that visitors will search it. However, when you search the keyword with the quotes you are filtering your search results to those that are exact matches for that keyword (your competition for that keyword)

    Hope this helped.
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    Cheers,
    Gregg

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  • Profile picture of the author mlord10
    A lot of people will tell you to check your keyword competition using quotation marks. When you are doing keyword research with the Google keyword tool you need to set your search results to "Exact match," as this will give you the number of searches for an exact keyword phrase.

    When checking your competition within the actual Google search engine however, you do not need to use quotes. Many marketers always talk about checking your competition, and if it is "less than 20,000" or whatever the number is, you can easily rank on the first page of Google.

    I have tested this method, and I can tell you that the only competition you need to worry about when you are trying to rank for a particular keyword phrase are the websites/articles/blogs on the first page of Google.

    So, it really does not matter if a term has 1,000 competing pages in quotes or 1 million, all that matters is the strength of the pages or websites on page one. That is ALL you need to worry about, based on my extensive testing!
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    • Profile picture of the author Wiggy0618
      Originally Posted by mlord10 View Post

      So, it really does not matter if a term has 1,000 competing pages in quotes or 1 million, all that matters is the strength of the pages or websites on page one. That is ALL you need to worry about, based on my extensive testing!
      I have been suspecting this for a long time, and I agree.

      Besides, I might not be a guru at doing KW research, but I've done my fair share with the Google Adword tool (no software or paid products - just free stuff) and comparing it to Google results itself. And I'm sorry, but I keep hearing about how your KWs should have at least 50 searches/day and less than 10-20k results.

      Maybe there are niches out there this stuff exists, and if there is I wanna know about it. But in my niche(s), KWs are either in one of two categories:

      -if they have few results, they generally have even few searches

      -if they have a decent amount of searches, they have between a few and a boat-load of results
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      • Profile picture of the author shaunjamie2005
        I have always used this method that I learned from Pot Pie Girl when doing searches for competition.

        Take your keyword and search like this:

        intitle:"keyword phrase" inanchor:"keyword phrase"

        This should tell you how many people are optimized for the keyword. But I do agree that your true competition are the sites on the first page.

        I like to take the first 5 urls on the search page and see what type of back links my competition has. I use backlinkwatch.com and Backlink Checker
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      • Profile picture of the author mlord10
        Originally Posted by Wiggy0618 View Post

        I have been suspecting this for a long time, and I agree.

        Besides, I might not be a guru at doing KW research, but I've done my fair share with the Google Adword tool (no software or paid products - just free stuff) and comparing it to Google results itself. And I'm sorry, but I keep hearing about how your KWs should have at least 50 searches/day and less than 10-20k results.

        Maybe there are niches out there this stuff exists, and if there is I wanna know about it. But in my niche(s), KWs are either in one of two categories:

        -if they have few results, they generally have even few searches

        -if they have a decent amount of searches, they have between a few and a boat-load of results
        Yeah you are pretty much right on. I mean, as my post stated above putting the keyword phrase in quotes has done very little for me. I bought into this method for awhile, but after I actually tested things myself, I found it to have very little correlation with my articles that were actually ranking.

        I think a few years ago this used to be the case, but things have changed. People really over complicate things when they are trying to rank for a keyword. If you want to outrank some websites/blogs/articles on the first page of Google for your keyword phrase, then you need to see the PR, content, and backlinks for that web resource and see if you can beat it.

        This method has worked well for me anyways.
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        • Profile picture of the author billspaced
          Originally Posted by mlord10 View Post

          Yeah you are pretty much right on. I mean, as my post stated above putting the keyword phrase in quotes has done very little for me. I bought into this method for awhile, but after I actually tested things myself, I found it to have very little correlation with my articles that were actually ranking.

          I think a few years ago this used to be the case, but things have changed. People really over complicate things when they are trying to rank for a keyword. If you want to outrank some websites/blogs/articles on the first page of Google for your keyword phrase, then you need to see the PR, content, and backlinks for that web resource and see if you can beat it.

          This method has worked well for me anyways.
          I'd agree with this. You need to decide what KW you want to rank for and then look at the results (without the quotes in google b/c searchers don't search that way) - once you find your "competition," find out WHY they're in the top ten.

          I suspect it's age + of backlinks + "authority"

          I'd hope content falls in there too, but I've seen "blank" pages outrank content-rich pages, so I don't know if it really does. I think perhaps google has something in their algo that takes this into consideration but it may be a weak component. Or, they may "interpret" content from other data. Who knows. I doubt even google's top brass knows the entirety of their own algo.

          How "authority" is quantified is the $64 billion question. All other things equal, for any given KW, CNN will rank higher than your site (unless your site is FB, twitter, or google).
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          Bill Davis
          Chief Marketing Officer, SoMoLo Marketing

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  • Profile picture of the author costos gohdohb
    probably you will like this thread http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...d-i-wrong.html

    I've personally really liked this thread!

    Plus probably this one will also interest you http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...beginners.html

    Hope it is what you need!
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  • Profile picture of the author j-spratt
    putting keyword in quotes helps you see what percentage between broad and phrase match keywords when search with keyword tool, so you can check what value this keyword will have for your campaigns. You want to keep it in a 15% between the two. You can learn from doing this, I have found many micro niches this way, but putting quotes other than search I have never done.
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