E-Commerce keyword question

[EcommerceSite]

We sell ItemA. One of the phrases that brings people to our site is "ItemA for sale". Should I just try to target "ItemA" or should I try to get "for sale" in there? I have seen a few other variations such as "on clearance" or "to purchase" as well. Can I just focus on "ItemA" or do I need all of those variants as well?

[Travis-W]

These are called long tail keywords.  If you focus on "ItemA for sale" you'll benefit from essentially 2 keywords for the price of one, and to some extent, also other long tail keywords since "ItemA" is in there.

As to targeting them all individually - it's all about your commitment and how much time you want to spend.

[josh-riley]

I'd target both; short tail words can be harder to rank higher for, and the long tail can help sooner since they are often less competitive.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

I agree with Zora that by targeting the long tail you'll also optimize for the short tail.  To go further with targeting them all individually, that would depend on the competition, and the amount of variation of the keyword phrases.  Use the tools here on SEOMoz to find out the competitive level for those variants.  If it's pretty low, then one page would probably do, but if it's a tough search you would be better off creating more focused pages.

As for actually implementing a single page vs multiple pages, that would depend on context.  I would put "for sale," and "to purchase" on the same field, but clearance, to me at least, would be different.  If I were a consumer looking for a clearance product, I wouldn't want to land on just a regular page talking about buying the product.  I would want the page to match my search.

[EcommerceSite]

Do either of you have an example of a site that does this? I looked at both Amazon and Ebay and didn't see them doing anything like this.

[EcommerceSite]

Do you have any examples of any sort of e-commerce site? As an e-commerce site, they know they item is for sale so I don't see any added benefit to the customer, it feels like something google could catch on to.

[josh-riley]

I don't think either of those are really the best examples - Amazon ranks well for several factors that don't have to do with keywords and Ebay is too "owned" by people posting content vs. the site manager managing it.

Retail sites like Kohl's do this (ex: womens>womens dresses>womens maxi dresses) and same with bestbuy.com, and REI.

http://www.searchenginepartner.com/Latest-SEO-News/seo-trends-utilysing-lsi-and-the-long-tail.html

[Sean_Dawes]

Going after the head term and you can always use some onsite and link building to rank for the other longer tail terms. Also try leveraging user reviews if possible (and indexable). Why not see if you can get people to leave reviews on how your prices are so good its like always buying on sale compared to competitors. Get people to link to this page and I would not be surprised if you can get it to rank for your other targeted phrases

[WhoWuddaThunk]

Do you mean URL wise, or content wise?

Google isn't going to penalize you for offering a relevant page to your customers.  Just don't overdo it with your content.  i.e. don't do this:

Company X has tons of Widgets for sale!  In fact, we have the best price on our widgets for sale, and will beat any other company with widgets for sale!

For example, if you are a Jaguar car dealership you are going to have to reiterate that you are actually selling Jaguars, and not just talking about them.  So, you will need to additional contextual clues of phrases like "for sale" and "to purchase."  Otherwise you might just appear as an informational site, and not an e-commerce site.