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Interesting keyword results on Google

by Kelly Verge
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Perhaps this is old news to many, but it's the first time I've seen it.

I have a page that's optimized for a 3-word keyword phrase. Last night I was looking through Google's Webmaster Tools and saw that not only was this page ranking at #6 for my phrase, "best paper clips" would be a fitting example, but it's also #3 for the same text made into a compound word (i.e. "best paperclips").

I've always thought that Google ignored spaces and punctuation. Perhaps they do when looking at on-page factors, but if you search for {word1 word2 word3} in Google, you'll get different results than {word1 word2word3}.

I guess these instances might skew the search numbers a bit. For example since I'm ranking for both "phrases," I'm seeing more traffic than expected.

This probably doesn't change anything about how we should do SEO, but I thought it was interesting.
#google #interesting #keyword #results
  • Profile picture of the author internetmarketer99
    Generally that's because it's being searched both ways. And yes, if you want traffic from both phrases, you'll want to target both phrases. As you've seen, you're getting some "halo" benefits, but targeting the compound word as well will probably improve that significantly.

    Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author gadget_man
    I see a similar phenomenon with one of my site. I'm targeting a specific three word phrase but in my seo work I'm putting two of the words together. The market isn't a big but my reasoning is that I'd rather rank really high for a less searched phrase than fairly low for a common one. Despite me concentrating on my main phrase I do rank decently for the other combinations.
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  • Profile picture of the author RyanRingold
    I've definitely seen Google suggesting my pages for keywords that I haven't targeted. However, I still see more results when I increase my off page SEO factors for those keywords.
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    • Profile picture of the author internetmarketer99
      Originally Posted by RyanRingold View Post

      I've definitely seen Google suggesting my pages for keywords that I haven't targeted. However, I still see more results when I increase my off page SEO factors for those keywords.
      One way you know you're doing your SEO well, and one of the 'added' benefits, is that you'll begin to show up for terms you aren't directly targeting.

      Mark
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