Newbie has various questions about keywords

[nebbisch]

Hi All - Im just learning, would appreciate some clarification on how keywords work. Specifically:

1. For a phrase keyword, does order matter? E.g. is 'Bridging loans UK' the same keyword as 'UK bridging loans'?

2. Again in a phrase, do the keywords need to be adjacent? So if I had a an H1 tag on my page which was 'We provide Briding loans for the entire UK', would this be considered a match for the keyword phrase 'Bridging loans uk' ?

3. As I understand it, optimising your site for a certain keyword involves 2 things at a basic level:a) Including that keyword on your site, and b) Getting relevant inbound links from other sites with that keyword as the anchor text.

Is this correct?

Are there other large scale factors?

What is the balance between those 2 (or more) main factors? Which is most important?

[AlanMosley]

It is better to
have them in order but they do not need to be. You will come across the terms, exact,
phrase and broad in SEO a lot.

Lets say you have optimized for “Bridging loans”
Exact is best this is when someone types in “Bridging loans”
Phrase is next, it is when someone enters “I need a bridging loan for my house”
Broad is when some one enters “I have got bridging or my loan”

All things being equal, if someone has the text A B C on
their site and you have C B A, you would both expect to rank for ABC, but of
cause they other guy will beat you.

[AlanMosley]

It is better to
have them in order but they do not need to be. You will come across the terms, exact,
phrase and broad in SEO a lot.

Lets say you have optimized for “Bridging loans”
Exact is best this is when someone types in “Bridging loans”
Phrase is next, it is when someone enters “I need a bridging loan for my house”
Broad is when some one enters “I have got bridging or my loan”

All things being equal, if someone has the text A B C on
their site and you have C B A, you would both expect to rank for ABC, but of
cause they other guy will beat you.

[AlanMosley]

It is better to
have them in order but they do not need to be. You will come across the terms, exact,
phrase and broad in SEO a lot.

Lets say you have optimized for “Bridging loans”
Exact is best this is when someone types in “Bridging loans”
Phrase is next, it is when someone enters “I need a bridging loan for my house”
Broad is when some one enters “I have got bridging or my loan”

All things being equal, if someone has the text A B C on
their site and you have C B A, you would both expect to rank for ABC, but of
cause they other guy will beat you.