Keyword Targeting: A Simple SEO Trick When You Have Two Closely Related Topics

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You’ve got an idea. You’re ready to write. You do a quick bit of keyword research before you jump in …and you quickly find several related phrases. Suddenly you’re asking yourself:

Should I write two pages targeting two phrases? Or write one page targeting both?

There is a quick way to answer that question. It will show you if the two phrases are actually two separate topics or really just different angles on the same topic. Our goal is to answer this question…

Does Google consider these to be two separate topics?

This is a key question when researching blog keyphrases, but also for our sales-focused product and services pages. Keyword targeting is critical to both kinds of pages?and?visitors we all have on our websites.

Topics vs. Phrases

To find the answer, search for both phrases and look closely at the results. Is there a lot of overlap? Here’s an example of two search results pages for two separate phrases.

• Keyphrase one: deck addition value
• Keyphrase two: how much value does a deck add

In this example, you can see that the two share many of the same results. This is strong evidence that they are really the same topic.?One page can target both phrases.

Another clue: look for the bolded text within search results when you search. Google bolds the phrase that you search for, making search results easier to scan. But they also bold closely related grammatical forms and synonyms.

When you see words from your two possible phrases bolded in the search results for either, they are really the same topic.?One page can target both phrases.

Decision time

You can’t sit on the fence here. You’re either going to have one page or two. Here are your decision criteria:

• If there is a lot of overlap in the search results, the two key phrases are really one topic.?Write one page that uses both phrases.
• If there is very little overlap in search results, the two phrases are two separate topics.?Write two pages and target each phrase separately.

Here is our decision path:

Now you’re ready to take action. Here are the three basic steps for creating your search optimize page(s):

Continue to the full article.