Does the order of keywords matter?
Brenda came to me with a good question the other day: Does the order of keywords matter? I gave her a long answer, I’ll give you all another long answer.
But first, the short answer is: yes, the order of keywords matters. If google can choose between two lenses with roughly the same quality link profile, and the same keyword density on the page – it will put the one on top that has the title tag closest to the search query. So order of keywords is very important for SEO, especially in the title.
How about plural and singular? Well – google knows that they’re about the same thing, and will usually show the same pages in the top 10 for both. But the order of them may differ. So if you want to be sure, use both on the page.
What she didn’t ask, but I was reminded today, is synonyms. Try searching for LOTR in google. You will not find ONE webpage there that has LOTR literally in the title. They all say Lord of the Ring. But google is so smart, it knows they’re the same thing. So what do you do when making a lens about this topic (which you should only do if you can find a niche within a niche within a niche)? You still put both on the page, and use the keyword tool to figure out which is more popular and go with that one.
Back to the original question: while it’s good to have the order of the keywords precisely right in the title, elsewhere on the lens it’s good to mix it up. Because although most people are likely to search for blue berries, some people may search for berries blue. And both will count towards google knowing what the page is about anyhow. So mix it up, use synonyms.
The other day one of our prized lensmasters was asking in the squidu forums why her lens about ‘fall‘ wasn’t ranking. She’s used to her lenses ranking, because they’re so good 
I told her – the word fall is ambiguous. It also refers to people falling on the ground. So I said: use the word ‘autumn’ in there. I see today she went further than I suggested: she put the word autumn in the title.
But the thing is: if she’d remembered to use synonyms from the start, she would probably have had a trickle of traffic from people using the word autumn. And that would have helped her see that the word fall wasn’t helping her any and she could have optimized without my help.
So the general takeaway lesson from that is: use synonyms. It’s a quick way to make sure you catch that ‘long tail’: search phrases that don’t get used a lot. There are a lot of those, and optimizing for them is impossible, except by making sure you use the words that mean the same thing on the same lens. Another option would be to make one lens about fall, another about autumn, but I don’t believe in that myself.
The advantage of synonyms and mixing up the word order: you send out a wider net of possible phrases people might be using. And with a wider net the chances of being surprised by what you’re found with is larger. And that makes optimizing based on your stats easier.
9 Comments »
Lisa said :
May 13, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Good information, and it brings up a question I’ve always wondered about – how does Google handle stop words? Is Lord of the Rings treated the same as Lord Rings?
spirituality said :
May 13, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Usually stop words are ignored, but your example is the kind of thing where I’d be really surprised if they DID ignore them.
I just did a search – both bring up content about the LOTR, but the order has definitely changed. The ‘Lord Rings’ brings up two wikipedia pages on top, whereas Lord of the Rings brings up ordinary websites.
I guess the difference would be in the anchortext pointing TO those pages. You’d expect a lot of people to use the phrase ‘lord of the rings’ in anchortext to a LOTR site. But mostly stopwords are NOT used in anchortext. It would be a trigger to take stop words into account.
Google is very nuanced and gets more nuanced every year. When I just got online 10 years ago, they would actually tell us they ignore stop words, so why bother typing them. Now they don’t anymore – I guess that probably means they do use them a bit now, but they’re still probably not very important in most cases.
But where it’s part of a title, don’t leave it out.
Treasures By Brenda said :
May 13, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Here’s a similar situation to “blue berries…berries blue.” I made a discovery last night with regard to my lens Rare VHS Tapes ~~ A Collector’s Guide to Videotapes which I am trying to rescue from Google’s abandonment.
Google Keywords says that ‘Tapes VHS’ is a very good choice but it is such an unnatural thing to say…would you consider using a phrase like ‘tapes VHS’ or ‘berries blue’ as your main keywords, in your title or even your URL? I managed to put it on the page but it was painful.
mulberry said :
May 13, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I had wondered about this. In some instances I have used synonyms on the page but had never figured out if the results were positive. It certainly makes it easier to sound more natural too by using a synonym or switching the word order around a bit throughout the lens. Good info. once again.
katinka - spiritual said :
May 14, 2009 at 1:11 am
Brenda – that link doesn’t work. For a lens that has once ranked it’s usually not about the keywords anyhow, but about links. So find some nerdy tech forum or blog or something… or a techy group that features lenses, that sort of thing.
You could go with ‘tapes: vhs’ – less unnatural. And no, I don’t think I’d put that in a title, I might put it in several module subtitles though
Evelyn Saenz said :
May 14, 2009 at 4:03 am
First of all I would like to thank you so much for your help with my Autumn Unit Study which is it’s new name thanks to your suggestion of using a synonym for the word fall and Jimmie’s suggestion of using the words Unit Study to capture people searching for educational materials.
Thank you also for mentioning it here on this blog.
Fluffanutta just released new version of the ‘Lens Workshop Addon’ for Firefox: http://twurl.nl/qrgng2
When you go to the edit mode for tags you now have a color code for the tags you enter. He explained to me:
@evelynsaenz the colored tags show how popular they are; green=good vs red=not. more green tags means lens will appear on more other lenses.
My list of tags now looks like a Christmas Tree with very popular tags in bright green such as math, audio books, and education whereas bright red ones include fun activities for fall, autumn educational activities and fall coloring pages.
So my question to you is:
Should I leave the red tags that less people are searching for or is it good to have a variety of popular and not so popular tags?
spirituality said :
May 14, 2009 at 4:52 am
Hi Evelyn,
This is not a new feature – I’ve been using it for ages. I’ll think about how to answer the rest of your question. Very off topic here – keep posted on this blog
But for now, perhaps you should read up on some earlier posts I did about keywords and tags:
http://spirituality.squidtop.com/2009/01/12/seo-review-weight-loss-lens-pulled-apart/
http://spirituality.squidtop.com/2008/11/27/primary-squidoo-directory/
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-keyword-research
http://spirituality.squidtop.com/2009/01/06/newby-squidoo-tag-mistakes-using-the-related-lenses-feature/
AJ said :
May 15, 2009 at 4:04 am
This is a great topic with great help as usual Katinka. The other thing I wondered about the “tapes VHS” phrase is would it be OK to say “tapes (VHS)”?
I wondered who the Lensmaster with the fall lens was! I knew it was not my Autumn lens you were talking about! Looks like I have found another lens to lensroll!
katinka - spiritual said :
May 15, 2009 at 4:07 am
Yes – I guess saying tapes (VHS) would be fine, though I haven’t tried it.
As for that mystery lensmaster – I did link to her in the blog here
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