Keywords; singular or a phrase?

Hello forum,

I have a question about keywords. If I'm writing kewords for my site, do i break a particular key phrase down into single words or keep it as a phrase?

E.g.
If it's a travel website and i specialize in "Cheap spanish holidays" do I break it into "cheap, spanish, holidays"? or keep it as "cheap spanish holidays"?

My next question is, if I keep it as one sentance and someone searches for "cheap holidays" would it have been better to have broken my keywords into separate words for my site to have got a higher ranking?

Many thanks,

BBB

I would say that in my experience the plural form is better. Not sure about all fields, but in mine adding the s doubles the traffic. That is until google gets better at seeing them as the same words.

thanks for the reply, but my question's not really about plurals, it's whether or not I should break a particular keypharse into separate words.

More searches are done using multiple words, so I'd use two-three and four word phrases in this case: cheap spanish holiday, spanish holiday, holiday in Spain, Cheap holiday spain, etc. then i's use synonyms (substitute affordable, low cost, low price, etc. for 'cheap', and substitute vacation, getaway, etc. for holiday). For this particular phrase I wouldn't use the singel words 'spanish' or 'holiday' since they are so broad in meaning.

yes sorry, the "cheap spanish holidays" was just an example.
I'm just wondering if it's better to break a keyphrase into separate keywords, rather than keeping it as an actual phrase?

My experience is to keep it as a phrase and not break it down. For instance, if I use the keyword phrase: "Unique sympathy gift ideas"- I see traffice for "sympathy ideas", "unique gift ideas", "sympathy gift" etc. I think that by using one long keyword phrase, you will be encompassing several mini keyword phrases. It works for me.

reneewood!!!!
who the heck is that?
a stranger for sure!

I agree with Renee, keep them together, and play with them, ie cheap spanish holidays, spanish holidays, cheap holidays, etc.

OK, thanks for your replies Guys and Gals! Much appreciated!:smile:

Surprisingly different from the what seems to the concensus, I often find that I rank just as good for the plural as I do for the singular when I target the singular phrase.

That is the power of Google using stemming at work. It can depend on your keywords how well this works.

OK, to continue this discussion on my keywords. I've now refined my keywords to a list of phrases i wish to target specifically. Now, do I keep the same keywords on all of my pages, or do I tailor them specifically for each individual page? We're producing stock market software, so I'm thinking on the main page i have generic terms such as

"Stock market software, stock market investment, stock market quote, etc..." which would be relevant for that page as that is the content on te index page.

Then when they navigate to other pages such as a the portfolio management page I should develop another set of keywords / phrases for this specific page, such as
"portfolio management, portfolio management software, stock portfolio, portoflio manager, etc..."
Of course, making sure the content on the page correlates with these keywords.

I'm guessing google would prefer this as the keywords for this particular page are more relevant. Just want to check though. As you might have guessed, i'm quite new to this SEO mallarky! It's very interesting though!

In the way that narrowing the channel stregthens the stream, I think it's best to tailor your keyword phrases for each individual page. This allows the potential for ranking highly on more keyword phrases.

You already sound like a pro SEO!

don't break keyphrases into seperate words that aren't together. you won't benefit nearly as much.

and quite simply, the answer to this question can usually be found with: what would YOU be likely to search for? sure, "computer parts" would make a lot more sense than "computer part" but who would ever search for "search engine optimizations" before "search engine optimization"?