Chip’s B2B Tip #148 - Google and Dr. Andy

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Chip’s B2B Tip #148 - Google and Dr. Andy Willliams
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Dr. Andy Williams of http://www.ez-search-engine-optimization.com just sent me an email in which he discusses his own Google keywords research strategy.

Not only is Dr. Andy a great guy - he's smart about this stuff. I heartliy recommend you get on his list and pay attention to what he says ...

So here's what he said about it:

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3. Quotes or no quotes
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When I am trying to find out how much competition a phrase has, I search at Google by putting the phrase in quotes. e.g "blue widgets."

Now this seems to confuse a few people, because I regularly get asked the following:

QUESTION: "Why do you search for competition figures using quotes when most people don't use quotes in their searches?".

I also get this:

QUESTION: "Wordtracker says that the phrase "blue widgets" gets searched for 50 times a day at Google, and even though I am #1 on Google when I search for "blue widgets" (in quotes), I get no traffic. Why?"

Both of these questions are related. You need to understand when to search using quotes, when not to, and why.

Here is what I do:

1. Search with the phrase in quotes when looking to see how much competition a phrase has.

2. Search WITHOUT quotes when looking to see where a page ranks for a phrase.

OK, let's look at why I do that.

When you conduct a search at Google, Google tries to match up the words in your search request with pages in its database.

RULE #1 - If you surround a phrase in quotes, Google will try to find the exact phrase in the web pages in its database. e.g. If you type in: "big bad blue widgets" at Google, Google will look for pages that contain the exact phrase "big bad blue widgets".

Try it. You will see there are no results found for this phrase.

RULE #2 - If you do not use quotes around a phrase, Google will try to find pages that contain the words in your search request. e.g. If you type in: "big bad blue widgets" at Google, Google will look for pages that contain the following words:

big
bad
blue
widgets

but not necessarily in that order.

Try it. As you can see, there are 171,000 pages in Google that contain those words. So what have we learnt from that example?

Well, we know that there is not one webpage in Google's database that contains the exact phrase "big bad blue widgets".

So how much competition does that phrase have?

I would say it does not have any competition, because not one webpage contains that phrase. If you were to create a page with that phrase in it, your page will be the only page in Google with the exact phrase, so surely Google would see your page as more relevant than the 171,000 others that just contain the words that make up the phrase.

This is the reason I search for competition using quotes around my phrases. It gives me an idea of how many web pages are actually targeting the phrase. We all now how important inbound link text is to the ranking of a page, but it the phrase is not on the page, there is a good chance it is not being targeted in inbound link text either.

NOTE: In some competitive niches, you may still not rank at #1 for the phrase even if you are the only one, but you do at least have a good headstart in your optimizing strategy.

When searching for where your page ranks in Google, you obviously want to know the position your page will appear when the majority of people search for the phrase.

Very few people search for stuff using quotes, so neither should you when you are checking your rankings.

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Well - there you go. I hope that was an eye-opener for you ...

Once again, I definitely recommend you get on Dr. Andy 's list at http://www.ez-search-engine-optimization.com.

You'll be glad you did.

Chip