I’ve written about keywords and key word phrases ad nauseum. I just looked in the mirror, and noticed that my face isn’t quite blue enough. So, here we go again, and let me warn you, we are really going to split some hairs with this one.
When choosing keywords for your articles that are written in a way that intend to flirt with the search engine robots, it is worth while to tweak them to the finest detail. I stand by my words in the factoid I did about the best approach to SEO. However, once you have decided on the main keywords, and keyword phrases, according to the advice I’ve given in other factoids such as: Targeting the topic and keyword use with explanation of LSI/LSA, it doesn’t take much to give the knob that final little adjustment to tune it in perfectly.
Sometimes, if you are freelancing for others who turn over the keyword cloud to you, you can show off your smarts by using this simple method, requiring nothing more than the Google search box as the single tool, and improve on the criteria you were given, making your client glad they retained your services.
I was recently offered a gig producing SEO content aimed at health coverage for the self employed. After turning over the first three, one of the revisions that I was asked to make was this: Put a hyphen between self and employed, e.g.; self-employed vs. self employed.
Anal retentive you say? I warned you!
So let’s use this real world example to demonstrate the simple way that you can show your client that you know a little more about writing for SEO than they do. Not to upstage them of course, but if they could do it better, then why hire another? Why not show what you know at the risk of sounding like a smart ass? You are getting paid to deliver; there is no crime in delivering more than what you are asked for, right?
By entering “self employ” (without the dash) the results returned will look like this:
Self employed -28.4 million
Self employment tax -13.4 million
Self employment health insurance -.8 million
You’ll notice the results populate just under the search box as you are typing, so you don’t even need to finish the word. For “self-employ” (with the dash) you’ll see:
Self-employed -25 million
Self-employment tax -12.2 million
Self employment health insurance 1.5 million
Interestingly, “self-employment health insurance” returns almost double the results with the dash. Every other category seems to have higher results without the dash. The moral of the story:
Use the dash when talking about health insurance in relation to self-employment. When talking about Self employment tax, omit the hyphen. Over all, it’s always a good idea to mix it up especially when you are trying to rank with the best of them as well as cover many bases. If trying to grab the “odd-ball” searchers too, while taking a more “long tail” approach, use this method to find common mis-spellings in search terms. In most cases customers who can’t spell well, well, their money is just as green.
