Does this make a difference?

[melvin]

Hi,

I'm a complete newbie when it comes to SEO and after reading the tutorial provided by seo-guy, I feel more comfortable to give seo a try.

My first question: if I have 2 KWs, example: "building house" and "house building"

If I were to just target one set of the keywords, ie "building house", does that mean I'm also optimising for the KW "house building" as well?

Or does the arrangement of the word does make a difference?

Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Melvin Ng

[jocelyn]

You will rank lower for the second one since the word order is reverse compared to the search.
If you stick a few of the second one, you may do better for it, but may injure the main one.
It's also determined by the type of sites you are competing with.
It's a trial and error and tweaking thing.

[owlcroft]

Or does the arrangement of the words does make a difference?
The easy way to see is to do an actual Google search on various word pairs or phrases and see how different the results are or are not.

Using the particular pair you mentioned, you will see that the SERP results are quite different.

A related but different matter is "nested" phrases. If you optimize for "house building supplies", you will likely--no one but Google can say for sure--also be working on "house building" and "building supplies" (but that approach can be carried to ludicrous extremes that become counter-productive).

[Cyber-SEO]

You should try to put some text into your body for both of the ways, it will help you rank better for the second keyword.

[dilligaf]

Melvin, Welcome to the forums. If you're comfortable with it, by placing a link in your signature you'll get a couple of free back-links and if it's the site in question it makes for an easy reference. It's no biggy though, welcome.

I gotta go with Jocelyn and Owlcraft on this one. Google definitely prioritizes the order of the keywords (I'm assuming this would refer to off page stuff as well - anchor text). You've only got so many keyword opportunities per page and so many incoming links, by trying to cover both in one page, you'll only hurt both.

By building two pages that cover the same 3-5 word phrases in different orders you'll increase your chances, increase your content (target one for information about building house supplies and the other for products for house building supplies, not a good reference but I hope you get the thought) and you'll pop up for things you'd never thought of.

The big question is, IMO, how does Google treat that anchor text. (eg if some-one links to me with "house building" how does that impact my SERPS for "building house"?) And Jocelyn's "It's also determined by the type of sites you are competing with." Do you have enough links to cover both? Where can yo make an impact?

[melvin]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the wonderful feedback. The reason I didn't wanted to put in the sig file was because I do not want to be seen as spamming the board with ads. Rather, I'm truly interested in improving my SEO skills.

One new question pops up after reading the post by dilligaf, if I were to have multiple optimized pages for different KWs, do I have my link partners link to different pages or do I request for all of them to link to my main index page (which is actually a sales letter page)?

If everyone were to link to the main page, then my individual pages would have lower PR due to the fact that PR is page based and having no links to those pages does not augur well.

However, if I were to have different link partners linking to various pages, then the number of links per page would be diluted.

It seems the more I read the more questions I have. Hope you guys can bear with my silly questions.

Thanks :-)

melvin

[dilligaf]

Melvin, Regarding inbound links, Personally I would start by focusing all inbounds to yourdomain.com with the most opportune anchor text (realistic). Once the PR comes into the system you can pass it to other pages with the appropriate anchor text and be credited for back-links if your PR is 4+.

Once your PR is up and you're competing for the terms on your home page then I'd start directing links to your other pages.

Have you read Jocelyn's PR post (http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=669)?

[jocelyn]

[QUOTE=dilligaf]...Personally I would start by focusing all inbounds to yourdomain.com with the most opportune anchor text (realistic)...[/QUOTE]
Yes... this is how you have to do it, until you hit at least PR5 for your home page. This will make googlebot crawl your pages more often and it's very nice to be able to modify a page more often.
Once you have the PR juice to the home, then get some links to the subpages.
PR does influence the SERPS, but PR is also important to set gbot visits rate and depth.

[SEO_AM]

Another approach is to dedicate a page to whichever keyphrase is not your primary on your homepage. Then do a text anchor with the other keyhrase to the second page. SEO the heck out of both pages for the relevant keyphrase you are using on that page.

If you have a fistful of KW's you can use the same approach. Make sure you link back to your homepage from all your pages. Best way is to have a common navigation bar in a header or footer on all your pages.

[Robert]

[QUOTE=melvin]
My first question: if I have 2 KWs, example: "building house" and "house building"

Or does the arrangement of the word does make a difference?[/QUOTE]

Hi Melvin,

As others pointed out, the order does make a difference.

This is just a bit of additional item of information that may be useful for choosing which combination to emphasize.

Spellweb (which uses the google API) is designed for another purpose, but can give you an indication which word is used more frequently. In this case, it indicates that "house building" is much more popular in searches.

40,000 votes for "building house"
302,000 votes for "house building"

I hope that this helps a bit.

[melvin]

Great feedback!

Thanks!

melvin