SEOmoz member Michael Janik wrote to me last week and asked about how to optimize for multiple word order search phrases. I think it’s an excellent topic, and one that we haven’t covered well in the past.
The issue arises from keyword phrases that receive search queries in different formats, for example:
- Restaurant Reviews Seattle
- Reviews Seattle Restaurants
- Seattle Restaurant Reviews
Looking at the search results, each of these queries produces different ordering in the results. When this happens, an SEO campaign focused on getting traffic for each can be very frustrating. You’re optimizing for one phrase configuration in the title and text, but others are getting queries and traffic that has the same intent match. What to do?
STEP ONE: Determine Relative Traffic Levels
This is best accomplished using Google AdWords’ Traffic Estimator Tool, which allows for exact phrase match volume searches.
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You can see above that by using “quotes” around the phrase, I can request the traffic estimates for a precise phrase order. The tool then gives back some predictions:
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This data isn’t terrific, but it’s better than nothing, and by sorting by “search volume” I can see some visibility about order of popularity/demand (even though the green bars on the bottom two appear to be the same length).
Conceptually, you could also try the more basic Keyword Tool from AdWords, but you’ll often get results like these:
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Bizarre, right? Although these tools should obviously be pulling data from the same source, they’re directly contradicting one another. Intuition and experience tell me to trust the Traffic Estimator – “Seattle Restaurant Reviews” almost certainly has more searches each month than “Restaurant Reviews Seattle.” Even the number of advertisers would appear to support this conclusion.
STEP TWO: Make the Higher Traffic Phrase Priority One
Although it may seem obvious, you should go after the highest traffic phrase ordering first. I say this even if you’re thinking the competition is stiff and you might have a better shot with some of the less high demand orderings – those will come later.
You’ll want to not only do great on-page optimization (which I’ll get to in step 3), but also get a lot of good anchor text links pointing in with the right phrase. For this specific example, I’d be issuing web badges to all the restaurants we reviewed that point back to both our reviews page for their restaurant and an anchor text link below to the reviews page. It’s the equivalent of businesses that put up the “people love us on Yelp” sticker decal in the window 🙂
STEP THREE: Optimize on the Page (& Site) for the Different Phrase Ordering
For on-page optimization of something like this, I’d go with:
Title: Seattle Restaurant Reviews | Citymoz Reviews Seattle’s Top Restaurants
URL: citymoz.org/reviews-seattle-restaurants (This is the toughest of the phrases to target with on-page copy and getting anchor text like that is going to be very difficult; hence, by using it in the URL, we can kill two birds with one stone and have another edge on the competition.)
Meta Description: Restaurant Reviews for Seattle, WA. Citymoz tackles deals, dining & decor in our Seattle restaurant review extravaganza – get the best (& worst) Seattle has to offer.
Headline (H1): Seattle Restaurant Reviews
Headline (H2): The Best & Worst Restaurant Reviews in Seattle
Use of Phrase: “Seattle Restaurant Reviews” at least 3-4X on the page, in sensible ways, where it makes sense for users (I hate reading anything that looks “SEO’d”). Probably 2-3X mentions of each “Reviews Seattle Restaurants” and “Restaurant Reviews Seattle”
Image/Graphic with Alt Text: Citymoz Reviews Seattle Restaurants
A final note on on-page optimization for this – I don’t like to abuse internal anchor text. I’ve seen it have negative effects. I’d probably link to this page internally with “Seattle Restaurant Reviews” or, if my entire site was about reviews, maybe just “Seattle” to be organic and natural. I would, however, link to it from places like the blog or other articles with the more optimized anchor text, as it makes more sense in a non-navigational element.
STEP FOUR: Link Building with Alternate Anchor Text
This is one of the best ways to earn those top rankings for the different phrase orders. Chances are, most of the folks who currently rank well have very little external anchor text pointing to their pages with the less common anchor text variances, making this a prime area to be competitive. Even 5-10 instances of the anchor text from low PageRank (but indexed and relatively frequently crawled) pages will usually give you the boost you need to get into the top spots.
I’d love to get discussion started about other strategies you’ve used to help with the multiple word order phrases – it’s one of the subtleties of SEO that rarely gets a public mention.
