Keyword selection

[KeithO]

I came into my seo job and took over for a guy who had been doing it here for a couple of years. There are some things I look at that he's done and wonder what inspired him to do things this way. One of the clients who has us send them biweekly reports has us do inquiries of their name in 6 different ways because of his suggestions. Another client has their site name as initials however amongs the keywords are the initials straight up and then again but surrounded by quotes. I haven't seen anything about this. How much does punctuation (dashes and quotations) influence positioning?

[SEOforGoogle]

Quotations around your keyword will give you an exact match in your search results. If the dashes are used in commonly searched phrases, that should be what you go by, but in the following example, both cases could apply:

b-to-b (2.6 million search results in Google)
b to b (351 Billion) search results in Google)

so, as you can see, it's extremely important to distinguish between the phrases as one is much more competitive.

As far as positioning, you could see by the above example that the placement of the keyword is relevant to the competetion.

[KeithO]

Well, now i feel like an idiot for not trying it out like that for myself. I was concerned because for one of the clients, there are 4 different variations quoted and unquoted and they have the same rankings.

[SEOforGoogle]

No need to feel that way - there are many different ways to accomplish the same thing...

[dburdon]

Keith,
keyword selection is a science in itself.

Essentially there are 5 sources I use:

1. Imagination. Simply imagine yourself in the place of a prospective customer. What search phrases are they likely to use?

2. Friends and family. These people are more likely to be objective than someone inside a company.

3. Competition. Look at the top sites in your market category and see what terms they are using. Both in the meta tags and site content.

4. Research. Take a look at Word Tracker or Overture and see what terms seem prevalent.

5. Trial and error. In conjunction with all of the above see what works and amend as you go.

David Burdon www.simplyclicks.com

[KeithO]

I hadn't thought of taking advantage of friends and family. Thats a great idea!

[incrediblehelp]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...search+queries

All results above very interesting to check out.

[crashingflwrgrl]

I hadn't thought of taking advantage of friends and family. Thats a great idea!

LOL....Taking "advantage" of friends and family is seldom a good idea.

[brian.mark]

I think it was meant to "utilize their lack of interest in the subject" to see what words they might use. If they are too connected, then the words won't be the same.

"Take advantage" probably isn't the exact right term, although that's what too many people do.

Brian.

[crashingflwrgrl]

Oops.... I thought it was obvious I was just poking fun.