Ranking for combined version of keyword but not separated version

[Andy9412]

Hi All,

My site is currently ranking on page 1 for the term "golfholidays" but is ranking at the bottom of page 3 for the term I am targeting and have optimised for, which is "golf holidays". Does anyone have any experience with the combined keyword ranking above the singular version? Nowhere on my page doesn't it mention the term "golfholidays" and backlinks to my site mostly use the anchor "golf holdiays"

Thanks!

[RobertvanHeerde]

Hi Andy,

Unfortunately, this is very common. It's also the case with plural and singular keywords. If you search (in Holland, in Dutch) for second hand car, you get a different SERP than when you search for second hand car_s_.

The site that ranks position #1 for the singular search, ranks on position #6 for the plural version. All the sites in the top 5 are sites with second hand cars, so there is no different intent in the search.

I'm afraid that there is not much you can do about it....  Maybe somebody else has a different experience?

Kind regards,

Robert

[KaneJamison]

I'd chalk it up to being a quirk. "Golf holidays" is the keyword that actually has volume, therefore anything happening on "golfholidays" is mostly a curiosity unless you can track conversions from it. I would ignore it and keep plowing forward with your efforts to rank for the one you care about.

More likely than not you just need to keep building the authority of your site and make sure your page is well optimized for the phrase "golf holidays" and you'll get there. Most of the sites I see ranking on page 1 for that query have a decent number of links to them. 5 results are homepages which tend to have more links than internal landing pages, and the landing pages that are ranking are reasonably well targeted. As an example of what it takes to show up with a well optimized internal page with no links - British Airways (https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/destinations/holiday-types/golf-holidays) is only ranking 10th for the query with a highly authoritative site.