Key Phrases

As the name suggests 'keywords' refers to individual words whereas 'key phrases' refers to more than one word. Google’s index essentially needs to be able to read text in order to categorise and rank pages. This may be text, links, and IMG Alt Attributes in your own pages, and text and anchor text (hyperlink text) in the pages which provide links to your pages. In its most basic sense, whatever keywords and key phrases you need your pages to rank for actually need to be included in your pages, and in the anchor text of the page content that links to your pages from other pages. Different elements or ‘signals’ in your pages carry different amounts of weighting in establishing the relevance of your pages to certain key phrases. Your pages are likely to be in competition with a number of other pages.

Short Tail Key Phrases

This term refers to single keywords or two word key phrases. These could be general or specific, but in most cases these are likely to be general have more competition, and be related to the information search stage of the buying cycle.

Long Tail Key Phrases

This term refers to phrases of two or more words. These are likely to be more specific and focused, and more related to the later stages of a buying cycle.

Optimisation for your website should therefore take into account and cater for both types of key phrases.

Niche Keywords and Key Phrases

These are generally very specific keywords and key phrases for which there is currently a low amount of competition (see "Choosing Key Phrases" below).

Choosing Key Phrases

It is likely that the product or service you offer dictates the starting point for choosing the keywords and key phrases that you include in your web pages. Keyword Selector Tools such as Word Tracker use data / information about actual search engine searches. These allow you to see how many searches there have been recently for specific key phrases, and by means of various indexes (KEI) and other indicators (In Anchor and Title figures) get some idea of the competition you would face if optimising your pages for those keywords and key phrases. As well as being a kind of ‘reality check’ for your keyword and key phrase hunches, keyword selectors also highlight other potential niches that you may not have though about. It is often a good strategy to spread the risk by producing content which could attract some high quality niche visitors rather than solely competing head-on with just a few highly competitive key phrases.

Trying to optimise a single page for a large variety of keywords and key phrases can mean that your efforts are spread too thinly, and the page doesn’t achieve a very high degree of relevance (or importance) for one main key phrase. SEO strategies often involve optimising individual pages for a small number of keywords and key phrases.

Optimisation is relevant for the natural listings and Pay-Per-Click because the more relevant your PPC landing pages / squeeze pages are to the PPC adverts you create, the higher quality scores Google gives your landing pages, and the lower the cost per click as a result.