Variations of keywords

[flaxseoguru]

Is it good for search engines to use variations of words in your articles?

ie, child, kid, baby, toddler, infant

What if this dilutes your main keywords? Does this matter?

And what about possessives, ie children's, does that screw it up too?

What about motivates, motivation, motivated, for example, are they best avoided?

 

[Kutaone]

Good ?

While I am not an SEO guru like yourself I am curious to hear the answer to your question. Focus on one keyword or hit a few or variations? Or make one landing page for each word you would like to target...

Thanks in advance to whomever answers...

Kutaone

 

[beryas]

You need to vary your keywords for a multitude of reasons. Of course the main keyword you are targeting you need to target around 60% of the time but you need to switch up the variations the other times. You do this to build different looking links to your website which makes it not look like low quality links or spam and also it helps you rank for long-tail or secondary keywords better. Anchor text does matter but it is not the key factor in ranking high so you are better off making the links look as natural as possible which means not having every single link to you saying the same thing.

 

[diytechblog]

Determining what works

One of the more difficult aspects of marketing is detrmining what works and what does not. I like the percentage route, where you spend 60% of your marketing efforts on things that work 90% of the time and 10% of your efforts on methods that may only work occationally.

 

[bigcat1967]

You know - I don't have the link (and it doesn't matter since I'm a noobie here an not allowed to post links anyway) - but this one SEO "Master" claimed that he centered around just one keyword. No variances. This was a blog - and man, you should've seen the number of ppl that disagreed w/ him.

For me, I get a couple keywords and change it up a little w/ like a plural or something of that nature. The most important thing is that I write normal so that it will look as natural as possible - and not worry about the percentages. In fact, I threw percentages out a long time ago.

Now the thing I get into is that I build a lot of links to my sites...so it is possible to have a site that isn't as keyword rich as another site, but have relevant links pointing back to the site.

 

[Mousee]

While choosing keywords you need to think about your target audience - what words they use while searching. I realized that most of my customers never right "buy a boat" but "buy boat". So, I believe that it's better to concentrate on the most effective keywords and reach top Google positions for them.

 

[DMCyrus]

You need to vary your keywords for a multitude of reasons. Of course the main keyword you are targeting you need to target around 60% of the time but you need to switch up the variations the other times. You do this to build different looking links to your website which makes it not look like low quality links or spam and also it helps you rank for long-tail or secondary keywords better. Anchor text does matter but it is not the key factor in ranking high so you are better off making the links look as natural as possible which means not having every single link to you saying the same thing.

So, what you're saying here is that If I have my store name in my signature at several different forums I should not be doing this?

 

[DMCyrus]

While choosing keywords you need to think about your target audience - what words they use while searching. I realized that most of my customers never right "buy a boat" but "buy boat". So, I believe that it's better to concentrate on the most effective keywords and reach top Google positions for them.

If you were to search for "buy a boat", Google would just take the "a" out anyway, wouldn't it? I don't do my key phrases with words that I have seen Google remove from the search anyway.

 

[Linda Buquet]

So, what you're saying here is that If I have my store name in my signature at several different forums I should not be doing this?

No a few forums is no big deal and it is your store name after all. May be good to occasionally do a sig with Best Fishing Lure Store or whatever your main keywords are. But not a big deal.

If you were to search for "buy a boat", Google would just take the "a" out anyway, wouldn't it? I don't do my key phrases with words that I have seen Google remove from the search anyway.

You also want the anchor text for real eyeballs not just search engines so you need to use anchor text that makes sense and is clickable. So "buy a boat" is better for readability and clickthroughs, does not matter that G will drop the a.