Keyword Targeting - How to Properly Target Two Similar Terms?

[FPD_NYC]

Hi all,

So I have a question about "best practices" when you have two unique, but highly similar keywords you are targeting.

Let's use the examples of "raincoats for women," which gets 9,900 searches a month, and "rain jackets for women," which gets 4,400. I am in the process of selecting keywords for my client's "keyword portfolio" and need to come up with a strategy when faced with two similar keywords that use different terminology.

I'm well aware that there should only be one page for "women's raincoats" but there is no doubt in my mind that Google will give preferential treatment to whichever version of the keyword (raincoats/rain jackets) I include in my title tag, meta description, content, etc. I know that the modern philosophy is that Google is sophisticated enough to understand that the two words are essentially synonymous. That said, would you

A) only pick "raincoats for women" for your client's keyword portfolio and focus exclusively on that term in your optimizations?

b) pick both terms and try to strike an even balance between both in your optimizations?

c) pick both terms and only optimize for "raincoats for women" and hope that "rain jackets for women" gets some peripheral benefit from your optimizations via Google's understanding of synonyms?

Thanks!

[seomozinator]

"B" option is way to go.

Just optimize and use those terms in natural way, don't keyword stuff and you will be fine.

[FPD_NYC]

Thanks for your help. I'm still seeing so much evidence that 'exact match' optimizations really move the needle in organic search, which is the only reason I have hesitations. While I fully endorse the idea that your site's language should be well-written and user-friendly, I don't want to lose out on any opportunity to target the best keyword.

[seomozinator]

You can use full keyphrase in page tilte/content/h1 tags and so on without keyword stuffing.

There are lots of good posts and whiteboard fridays about that. Here is one of them: https://moz.com/blog/keyword-targeting-density-and-cannibalization-whiteboard-friday

[FPD_NYC]

Awesome, thank you!