Keyword Phrases - Can You Break Them Up?

[reidsteven75]

Can you break up a search query across a sentence and have Google still recognize which query you are targeting?

Let's say I'm trying to rank a page for the phrase "best haircuts calgary".

Is Google's algorithm advanced enough to look at page title "Best Haircuts - Where To Get Them In Calgary" and know it's targeting the query "best haircuts calgary"?

If it can't do this right now, I could see it advancing to this at some point in the future, which would then change the game quite a bit in terms of how creative you can get creating pages for queries.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Yes Google could easily understand that and I agree with you quite a bit I think some of the stuff that's coming down the pipe in the next few years will be complete game changers and nothing we could expect not everything but they'll be some things that no one expected of course.

I think Google is going to get more and more personal the fact they use Gmail, android phones Google is an ISP now there kind of a monopoly taken over but we have to live with them.

But Do not jump the gun didn't think that anything you think is possible is going to work to get you ranked right now follow their rules. Until they change.

I think your predictions are correct.
Sincerely,
Thomas

[SEO5Team]

Hi Steve,

On page title tags are just one element that Google looks at when placing you in the SERP's. In addition to the on page you also need to have strong off page elements signalling the importance of that phrase to Google on your site. One of our clients is ranking at the top for a non profit keyword even through a different variation of that keyword phrase is mentioned on the title tag.

Cheers,

[reidsteven75]

It's one thing to understand it, but does it mean the same thing to Google in terms of ranking the page?

Let's say you have two pages that are exactly the same except for the page title:

"best haircuts calgary - where to get them?"

"where in calgary to get the best haircuts"

Duplicate content aside, do you think Google would rank one of those higher than the other for the query "best haircuts calgary", or rank them the same?

[KaneJamison]

So - hard to give a good answer for this aside from subjective opinion of what we've noticed recently. And, whatever answer I write will probably be dated 3 to 6 months from now.

With that said, the above answers are about right. Google should be able to understand these, and probably does (especially when there are no exact match results), but that doesn't mean that the page will rank if there are a bunch of people specifically targeting the "best haircuts calgary" variation.

If there were two pages, one with a split keyword and multiple links and social shares, and the other one with an exact match keyword and zero links or social shares - I'd put my money on the page with the split keyword.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Kane,

I could not agree with you more. For instance I have a client that currently has 26,000 visitors a day because of a awesome campaign that went viral could not be happier. One page that contains the news story receives 10,000 visitors. While the homepage might get much of the direct traffic from all the news sources online there is a call to action to view the specialty item. Sorry I can't get more into it.

Either way we just picked up traffic immensely and because of the amount of social sharing along with the incredible link velocity being pushed to the homepage and the item page only granite the item page is starting to get more links and the shares are beyond what the home page is by tens of thousands.

What I'm getting at is because of the links and the social aspect the fact that this keeps snowballing is something I'm extremely proud of.

We are going to be on the largest news network morning show next week and I anticipate this is just the beginning of the attention focused on just to pages 1 being the home.

So obviously I know you are right the more links and social shares the better the page will rank I could write gobbledygook is the title and it would still Get insane traffic.

I hope that helps,

Thomas