Is it a good idea to target a similar versions of a keyword?

[Chris-tx]

Salute you all,

I am optimizing a site for an attorney. I have done some good research and find the keyword difficulties.

Some of my keywords are very similar was wondering is this a good idea and safe (white hat) or not?

e.g. page title: 1) city immigration lawyer  2) city immigration attorney

My main and first reason is to target all users. Since some will search under 'attorney' and some under 'Lawyer'.

Secondly one is easier than the other.

I appreciate any input from more experienced seo experts.

Chris

[DJ123]

My opinion, target both of them using two separate campaigns.

The market is telling you what they want.

[David-Kley]

I agree with DJ on covering it separately, but only from a paid search perspective.

If you are clever enough with your on-page content writing, and page titles/descriptions/keywords you should be able to cover both relatively easily. Optimize a bit more heavily for the stronger search query, or the one that has the most searches. This can be found using the Google Keyword Planner.

People are not going to want to read two separate pages of lawyer and attorney worded info. Could also get you into trouble with Google if the pages are similar to one another.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

This is one of those circumstances where Google know that an attorney and lawyer are one in the same and will deliver results for Lawyer when you search for Attorney. As David said, if you try to cover off both words here, then you could land yourself in trouble.

If I do a search for "London Immigration Attorney" then I get results back for Lawyer, so for me, this is the phrase that I would go for.

-Andy

[Chris-tx]

Hey guys,

I love SEO community culture. I really do.

I really appreciate all your inputs.

Let me help you understand what I am thinking to do. I am targeting different set of keywords for the same site. aiming to have different page titles with different keywords for each page. I want to rank for both keywords on different pages with different content.  They have different keyword difficulty. One is easier than the other. e.g. one is 21% and the other 40%.  and when I searched for  'city Immigration Lawyer' and 'city immigration Attorney'. I get different search result with different ranking.  I want to rank for those who search for word 'attorney' as well as those who search for 'lawyer'.

I have seen a site on Google first page, they have used both lawyer and attorney in the same page title. They have both words on the same page content too.  e.g.  ....immigration lawyer | ....immigration law attorney

But I don't want to do that. If I use 'best ... immigration Attorney' the content will have attorney in it. If I use 'best .... immigration lawyer' my content will be written accordingly. but in my site I will be using attorney and lawyer in different pages.

What y'all think about this?

thanks,

Chris

[bridget.randolph]

Hi Chris,

Don't use two separate pages for these queries - they are effectively the same (just a different wording for the same thing).

As the other commenters have noted, these terms are very similar and given the way Google is continuously moving towards semantic search and understanding concepts/topics rather than strict keyword matching, you should easily be to target both terms with a single page. The only reason not to do this would be if 'attorney' and 'lawyer' were actually two totally different services but as far as I know that is not the case, they're simply synonyms (at least in layperson's terms - even if there's a technical distinction presumably your target audience won't be likely to know or care).

Creating two different pages for what is basically the same topic will therefore not be useful to users and could get you in trouble with Google - at the very least you'll be confusing the search engine as it won't know which one is more relevant, and you'll be splitting any potential link equity you might get to those pages.

[Chris-tx]

Hey guys,

Thank you so much for all your inputs.

Sorry I was very busy couldn't get back sooner. I appreciate you advices.

Chris