Comments on: SBS Mailbag: How Should I Target Related Keywords?

By: Rachel

Rachel — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:52:49 +0000

Great suggestions. I was trying to explain this to another one of our clients who were insisting on having multiple websites for keyword variations. And yes agree that PCC helps to capture keyword variations, that’s if your budget allows for it of course

By: Anup

Anup — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:46:17 +0000

Great Article!

I have found by experience that anchored links do serve the goal so I would not include too many variants on the page.

PPC is also a great way of capturing variants and misspellings. I get 50% extra sales just through spelling variants on PPC

By: Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

Frank Schulte-Ladbeck — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:57:15 +0000

With semantic features being added to search engines, I would not worry so much about the variations of doggy and daycare. Eventually, “canine care” will be easily associated with those keywords.

As for the city situation, my experience has been that searchers will look for “Chicago area” or simply “Chicago” first, before honing in on the smaller adjoining town. Someone in Blue Island or Crestwood or any other city would recognize that most businesses would consider themselves as serving the greater community of the region, which is Chicago (I am in Houston myself, and face a similar situation with number of cities). I do mention zip codes and other city names on various pages, and that has worked out well with the search engines.

By: Allyn

Allyn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:54:44 +0000

I would use a few of the variations on the page as you mentioned but more importantly, I would get some anchored links TO my page with those keywords.
I bet three or four well managed Squidoo lenses with each variation linking to the site could take over just about every possibility of “doggy daycare Evanston, IL” … maybe an article submission or two just for good measure.
Local is easy with just a few anchored links. My opinion is that anchored links (off page SEO) weighs heavier than on page seo… but it is just an opinion. LOL

AL

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:08:39 +0000

I would suggest to the client that initially that they target the highest traffic keyword. Once they get traction on that word, then they can start optimising for related keywords around it. They could vary the anchor text in directory submissions, include variations in the onpage text, internally create links for those keywords, strong tagetc. Further, effective use of tagging could increase the chances of getting ranked for a multiple number of the keywords.

By: Stever

Stever — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:48:45 +0000

Like Matt said, Google is often pretty good at associating the roots of words with their plural and other variations. Not always, but often enough. But if you consistently use and optimize for one version only, “runners”, you will rank very well for “runners” and you might still make page 1 for “runner” or “running” but probably not do quite as well as for the specific version you’ve optimized for.

In your title tag you can be limited, but some creative phrasing can cover more than one variation, without looking like obvious spamming and jamming of keywords.

“Chicago Doggy DayCare | Day Care for Dogs | Evaston, Northshore”

There we just covered both versions of daycare, on version of Doggy and the plural of the root, Dogs. At 65 characters exactly we are right at Google’s limit AND we we’re still able to hit all 3 location names.

I would at least do some research into which version of Doggy/Doggie was more common and use the more common one in the title tag, then the second most common one in the H1 title at top of page content.

Then throughout the text of the page intermix the usage of dog/doggy/doggie and again for day care/daycare.

The one part you missed Matt, anchor text in links. In your link building have some links pointing to your page have one version in the anchor text, then other links use another version. And/or, as with many small businesses external link building can be a difficult task, the internal linking on the pages in your website should use some variation in anchor text linking to that page. You might be limited in how your site template does navigational links in a sidebar or upper tab bar, but text based links within the body of your content can, and should, be covering that task.