Stupid Question?? Is [painter new york] the same keyword as [painter in new york]?

[benjaminspak]

"painter new york" is what is referred to as a "head" phrase. That is, a phrase that has a high search volume but a high competition.

So on your home page's title; yes, I would target your head phrase. However you need to be building content in the longtail to rank well for that head phrase.

One of my favorite SEO Moz videos that talks about the longtail is back from 2009. It's dated but it's a great intro, and is still relevant for instruction purposes.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-ignore-the-tail-at-your-peril

If you really want to digg deep into SEO I reccomend watching all of SEO Moz's old videos on Vimeo and You Tube. The 5 year old ones get into a bunch of great ideas that are still useful today, but no one is talking about.

http://vimeo.com/user409469

http://www.youtube.com/user/greatsc0tt

6523521

[benjaminspak]

That's why I used the words "usually" and "generally" lol

[MicahMMG]

Ah, I misunderstood.  In that case, the short answer is that "painter in new york" and "painter new york" are not exactly the same.  However, as far as targeting it with your on-page SEO and your anchor text links, it makes little difference.  "painter new york" and "painter in new york" hits the same 3 keywords either way.  One does look much more natural than the other inside copy & anchor text, though.

[StrayCat]

[StrayCat]

Thanks Micah

[StrayCat]

Thanks Ben - I'll be sure to check those out

[JaredMumford]

Pay close attention to what Ben mentions about Local SEO. If you poke around long enough with your keywords you'll notice obvious trends in your area (that may not equate to other regions) particularly with the words "in" or "near".

You'll start to notice how certain prepositions trigger the map packs. It's just something to pay attention to depending on your keyword + locale.

[StrayCat]

Thanks Jared

[orlandovisiting]

Not a stupid question at all, and to be honest something I really struggle with. Stopwords are somewhat important because the results are different based on the search the user enters.

For example (real), I have a page and the title is "The Writer's Stop at Disney's Hollywood Studios". My site ranks differently based on the following permutations.

The Writer's Stop at Disney's Hollywood Studios = Position 10
Writer's Stop at Disney's Hollywood Studios = Position 12
Writer's Stop Disney's Hollywood Studios = Position 14

Interestingly removing the apostrophe's didn't appear to affect the search results. Only one test, so nothing conclusive I guess.

Ultimately my titles etc contain the proper phrase because from a user perspective it makes more sense.

[StrayCat]

Thanks Ian - yes it seems a real struggle to deal with the difference between which search phrases have the most searches and which search phrases sound right in the context of a web page.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Stray Cat,Your question isn't stupid at all and there is a great discussion happening here. I'd like to throw in a few details for your consideration.First of all, you cannot rely on the numbers provided by keyword research tools if you are including geo terms (like ny) in your phrases. There is currently no tool that provides accurate numbers for local keyword research. So, you can use things like Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google Insights to give you an idea of search volumes, but numbers are not to be viewed as accurate. Most Local SEOs do their keyword research without geo modifiers and then add these terms back into the list of discovered product, service and brand terms.If you were my client and were a NY painter, we would be targeting all 3 variations of your example terms. So, in the body copy, we might find sentences like:"Call The Painter New York Schools Have Hired 234 Times Since 2003 For A Beautiful Job!"and"When Hiring A Painter In New York, Always Request A License Number Before You Sign A Contract."and "A Professional New York Painter Will Always Present Documents Proving That He Is Licensed, Bonded and Insured."You can come up with better sentences than these which I've just reeled off, but the point is that you need to find ways to incorporate all of your core phrases into the copy. I further believe that it's not necessary to group keyword phrases together every time. If one line in your copy is talking about New York and the next is talking about painters, you are still using your keywords and signifying to bots and humans what your business does and where it is. Go with the lighter touch when you can, to avoid having copy that reads like a robot wrote it, and remember that your local search rankings are dependent on tons of different factors. The optimization of your pages is definitely a core factor, but it is only one factor.

[StrayCat]

Thanks Miriam