keyword selection: keyword order + regional keywords?

heya SE types! thanks for a great ng. very imformative for me.

I'm doing a complete re-design/restructure from scratch on a unusual
regional automobile service company's web site. This particular
company manages and coordinates car care services for other companies
with fleets of vehicles. In other words, they are NOT a car repair
garage or a detailing company per se, they just manage, coordinate, &
facilitate those services for companies with fleets.

They are a very regionalized company and can only serve customers
within driving distance of the major U.S. market city of Philadelphia,
PA. In addition, many potential customers have *never* heard of
such a car care service, much less be searching for it, so the site
will have to "educate the customers" as to why using their service
will ultimately save money.

I would appreciate some experienced keyword thoughts on the following
issues:

a. Keyword selection:
Since the services they provide is rather unique and varied
but highly regional, there are a ton of relevant keywords/phrases.
My basic keyword selection so far is pretty straight forward, but I'm
thinking autos are a pretty competetive keyword theme. here is the
basic words so far:
group 1: fleet, auto, car, automobile, vehicle, autos, cars,
automobiles, vehicles,
group 2: care, service, services, repair
group 3: manager, managers, management, provider, supply,
supplier, coordination, coordinator
group 4: philadelphia, pennsylvania, PA, Penn

group ?: autocare, carcare, {misspelled words here?}

The combos and permutations for keyword phrases are pretty large at
this point. More than I'll have pages or content for. Pretty
much any keyword from group 1 followed by any word from group 2 or
group 3 words etc is a legit keyword phrase. so I'm having some
trouble narrowing it down and creating the phases for each page,
assuming i will need a page that targets each phrase properly.

my questions are:
a. How much does keyword order matter to the SEs? How is the
keyword order weighted? If I optimize for "fleet repair management",
do I end up spanked by SEs for a search on "repair management of
fleets"?

b. Are the regional city and state keywords even worth
bothering with? Since the keyword phrases will already be 3 words
long adding one or two more seems silly to me. I may get more
worldwide hits to the site w/o region, but they will be useless hits
and wont convert these to sales in any way at all. --- in addition, i
never (well rarely) type in four or five word phases in the SEs.

c. What about plural keywords? auto -> autos, service ->
services. How do any of you handle that issue with phrases?

( btw, i'm not charging for any seo services, since I'm such a
clueless noob. Just seeing how much i can incorporate into the site
design at this point. i'm taking this one -- 50+ research hours
worth -- on the chin whilst i hunker down and ed-you-ma-cate meself.
but i must say it **IS** time consuming. )

thanks,
dale

nothing to plug, no one to annoy, no kids to feed with my current seo
abilities. = |~

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:40:21 GMT, Dale Helstrom
<DHelstrom@FixThisFirst-->Hotmale.com> wrote:

heya SE types! thanks for a great ng. very imformative for me.

[snip]
They are a very regionalized company and can only serve customers
within driving distance of the major U.S. market city of Philadelphia,
PA.

Hop, skip, and jump away from me as I sit here on the other side of
the Delaware River.

I would appreciate some experienced keyword thoughts on the following
issues:

a. Keyword selection:
Since the services they provide is rather unique and varied
but highly regional, there are a ton of relevant keywords/phrases.
My basic keyword selection so far is pretty straight forward, but I'm
thinking autos are a pretty competetive keyword theme. here is the
basic words so far:
group 1: fleet, auto, car, automobile, vehicle, autos, cars,
automobiles, vehicles,
group 2: care, service, services, repair

repairs

group 3: manager, managers, management, provider, supply,
supplier, coordination, coordinator
group 4: philadelphia, pennsylvania, PA, Penn

I would drop Penn as I haven't seen anyone using that [old] state
abbreviation [based on the stats for a site I help out on that is also
PA based in location] - but that's just me, and I don't do SEO for a
living either.

group ?: autocare, carcare, {misspelled words here?}

The combos and permutations for keyword phrases are pretty large at
this point. More than I'll have pages or content for. Pretty
much any keyword from group 1 followed by any word from group 2 or
group 3 words etc is a legit keyword phrase. so I'm having some
trouble narrowing it down and creating the phases for each page,
assuming i will need a page that targets each phrase properly.

Including the two misspellings you have a list of 26 words.

You can try to target each page for more than one phrase - so spread
out the keywords that way.

But I will let those who do do this for a living handle the rest as
the above are just my opinions.

Carol

"C.W." wrote:

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:40:21 GMT, Dale Helstrom
DHelstrom@FixThisFirst-->Hotmale.com> wrote:


heya SE types! thanks for a great ng. very imformative for me.

[snip]
They are a very regionalized company and can only serve customers
within driving distance of the major U.S. market city of Philadelphia,
PA.

Hop, skip, and jump away from me as I sit here on the other side of
the Delaware River.

I would appreciate some experienced keyword thoughts on the following
issues:

a. Keyword selection:
Since the services they provide is rather unique and varied
but highly regional, there are a ton of relevant keywords/phrases.
My basic keyword selection so far is pretty straight forward, but
I'm thinking autos are a pretty competetive keyword theme. here is
thebasic words so far:
group 1: fleet, auto, car, automobile, vehicle, autos, cars,
automobiles, vehicles,
group 2: care, service, services, repair
repairs
group 3: manager, managers, management, provider, supply,
supplier, coordination, coordinator
group 4: philadelphia, pennsylvania, PA, Penn

I would drop Penn as I haven't seen anyone using that [old] state
abbreviation [based on the stats for a site I help out on that is
also PA based in location] - but that's just me, and I don't do SEO
for a living either.

But Penn does appear in some company names and i still get
letters from folks using it. Penn State .. you know...

group ?: autocare, carcare, {misspelled words here?}

Maybe this is where Penn should fit in...

The combos and permutations for keyword phrases are pretty large at
this point. More than I'll have pages or content for. Pretty
much any keyword from group 1 followed by any word from group 2 or
group 3 words etc is a legit keyword phrase. so I'm having some
trouble narrowing it down and creating the phases for each page,
assuming i will need a page that targets each phrase properly.

Including the two misspellings you have a list of 26 words.

You can try to target each page for more than one phrase - so spread
out the keywords that way.

Auto Fleet Maintenance and Repair Services, Philadelphia, PA

Service Management for Vehicle Fleet Operations,
Philadelphia, PA

Car Care Coordination Sevices for Pennsylvania Auto Fleet Operators

Penn State Fleet Vehicle Service, Philadephia Region

Coordinated Maintenance and Repair for Fleet Vehicles, Philadephia

and so forth and so on.

You can put at least 4 keywords into a title, as long as you
have page content to go with each title.

cat yronwode

Lucky Mojo Curio Co. http://www.luckymojo.com/catalogue.html

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 23:19:17 GMT, from_you (AT) nomail (DOT) com (C.W.) wrote:

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:40:21 GMT, Dale Helstrom
DHelstrom@FixThisFirst-->Hotmale.com> wrote:

{snippage of lots of things to shorten my reply}

a. Keyword selection:
Since the services they provide is rather unique and varied
but highly regional, there are a ton of relevant keywords/phrases.
My basic keyword selection so far is pretty straight forward, but I'm
thinking autos are a pretty competetive keyword theme. here is the
basic words so far:
group 1: fleet, auto, car, automobile, vehicle, autos, cars,
automobiles, vehicles,
group 2: care, service, services, repair

repairs
Thanks. forgot that one.
group 3: manager, managers, management, provider, supply,
supplier, coordination, coordinator
group 4: philadelphia, pennsylvania, PA, Penn

I would drop Penn as I haven't seen anyone using that [old] state
abbreviation [based on the stats for a site I help out on that is also
PA based in location] - but that's just me, and I don't do SEO for a
living either.


group ?: autocare, carcare, {misspelled words here?}

You can try to target each page for more than one phrase - so spread
out the keywords that way.

aye, there's my noob dilemma in a nutshell, and the thrust of my

original post: selecting the most effective phrase combos, for each
page, and in particular, the home page:

Do I go for one strong SE theme with more competitive phrase like "car
repair", and just tack on variations of the regional keywords to use
as my phrase combos? I.e. "car repair Philadelphia", "car repair
Pennsylvania", "car repair pa", etc. --- thus creating my phrase
combos based on variations of the regional keywords?
or
Do I pick a weaker SE theme for the pages (read: more obscure
keywords) I.e. "fleet repair management" and "auto service
coordinator" and combine these main phrases more randomly with the
regional keywords on each page? I.e. "fleet repair management
Philadelphia", "auto service coordinator pa", "car care manager
Pennsylvania", etc...

ordinarily I would get a pretty good "business sense" feeling or
intuition and be leaning one way or the other pretty strongly...

.....but with SEO, I'm totally lost right now, there's just so many
variables to factor in.

dale

still nothing to plug, still no one to annoy, still no kids to feed
with my current seo abilities. = |~

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 02:09:51 GMT, catherine yronwode
<cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

"C.W." wrote:

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:40:21 GMT, Dale Helstrom
DHelstrom@FixThisFirst-->Hotmale.com> wrote:

[snip]
I would appreciate some experienced keyword thoughts on the following
issues:

a. Keyword selection:
Since the services they provide is rather unique and varied
but highly regional, there are a ton of relevant keywords/phrases.
My basic keyword selection so far is pretty straight forward, but
I'm thinking autos are a pretty competetive keyword theme. here is
thebasic words so far:
group 1: fleet, auto, car, automobile, vehicle, autos, cars,
automobiles, vehicles,
group 2: care, service, services, repair
repairs
group 3: manager, managers, management, provider, supply,
supplier, coordination, coordinator
group 4: philadelphia, pennsylvania, PA, Penn
The combos and permutations for keyword phrases are pretty large at
this point. More than I'll have pages or content for. Pretty
much any keyword from group 1 followed by any word from group 2 or
group 3 words etc is a legit keyword phrase. so I'm having some
trouble narrowing it down and creating the phases for each page,
assuming i will need a page that targets each phrase properly.

You can try to target each page for more than one phrase - so spread
out the keywords that way.

Auto Fleet Maintenance and Repair Services, Philadelphia, PA

Service Management for Vehicle Fleet Operations,
Philadelphia, PA

Car Care Coordination Sevices for Pennsylvania Auto Fleet Operators

Penn State Fleet Vehicle Service, Philadephia Region

Coordinated Maintenance and Repair for Fleet Vehicles, Philadephia

and so forth and so on.

You can put at least 4 keywords into a title, as long as you
have page content to go with each title.

cat yronwode

<pick_cat's_brain>

thanks for the response, cat.

So your suggestion is to combine key words basically "evenly" from
each of the 4 groups above as you've done for each page?

Before your NG reply, my poor SEO intuition had me leaning more toward
selecting one keyword combo from groups 1-3 --- I.e "fleet repair
management", and then creating more combos off that by varying the
regional keywords from group 4. I.e. "fleet repair management
Philadelphia", "fleet repair management PA", "fleet repair management
Pennsylvania", "Philadelphia fleet repair management", "Pennsylvania
fleet repair management" for each page. Would that be considered a
viable option? Is that going to make the keywords too dense on each
page? Did you weight that in your keyword selection above?
Would that be targeting the regional keywords *TOO* specifically for
the SEs that way?

sorry so many questions. sux to be a noob.

</pick_cat's_brain>

dale

Dale Helstrom wrote:

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 02:09:51 GMT, catherine yronwode
cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

Auto Fleet Maintenance and Repair Services, Philadelphia, PA

Service Management for Vehicle Fleet Operations,
Philadelphia, PA

Car Care Coordination Sevices for Pennsylvania Auto
Fleet Operators

Penn State Fleet Vehicle Service, Philadephia Region

Coordinated Maintenance and Repair for Fleet Vehicles,
Philadephia

and so forth and so on.

You can put at least 4 keywords into a title, as long as you
have page content to go with each title.

cat yronwode

pick_cat's_brain

thanks for the response, cat.

So your suggestion is to combine key words basically "evenly" from
each of the 4 groups above as you've done for each page?

Before your NG reply, my poor SEO intuition had me leaning more
toward selecting one keyword combo from groups 1-3 --- I.e "fleet
repair management", and then creating more combos off that by
varying the regional keywords from group 4. I.e. "fleet repair
management Philadelphia", "fleet repair management PA", "fleet
repair management Pennsylvania", "Philadelphia fleet repair
management", "Pennsylvania fleet repair management" for each
page. Would that be considered a viable option? Is that going
to make the keywords too dense on each page? Did you weight that
in your keyword selection above?Would that be targeting the re
gional keywords *TOO* specifically for the SEs that way?

sorry so many questions. sux to be a noob.

/pick_cat's_brain

dale

I am not a SEO professional nor do i play one on TV -- but i am a
person who has succeeded rather well in capturing good ranking in my
own chosen serps area.

What i do may not work for you -- but, as i noted above, i spread my
keywords out into many, many related phrases, formed as part of
natural-English sentences that convey actual, factual information to
the reader. I am an advocate of content-driven SEO, not games-playing
experimental SEO.

I came up with the alternative phrases above because that is how i
would personally use the terms. At my own site, you can find related
phrases like

dressing and anointing oils in the hoodoo tradition
using hoodoo "condition" oils in root work
dressing candles with hoodoo anointing oils
how to anoint candles with oils
hoodoo dressing oils used in ritual candle work.

and so forth. Each of these would be a link to the same page
Some of the phrases might appear several times (there are only so many
ways to write something). The objective is to write in natural English
speech, and to focus the anchor text on keyword rich phrases. I do not
pre-plan this -- it just flows out naturally, as a part of what i
write. Content is the reason for the site. Sales support the site (and
my shop), but the site is aimed at readers.

Cordially,

cat yronwode

Hoodoo in Theory and Practice - http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 05:09:36 GMT, catherine yronwode
<cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

I am not a SEO professional nor do i play one on TV -- but i am a
person who has succeeded rather well in capturing good ranking in my
own chosen serps area.

What i do may not work for you --

Cat, we just can't do the voodoo like you do.

BB

-
http://www.kruse.co.uk SEO (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
home of SEO that's shiny!

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 05:09:36 GMT, catherine yronwode
<cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

I came up with the alternative phrases above because that is how i
would personally use the terms. At my own site, you can find related
phrases like

dressing and anointing oils in the hoodoo tradition
using hoodoo "condition" oils in root work
dressing candles with hoodoo anointing oils
how to anoint candles with oils
hoodoo dressing oils used in ritual candle work.

and so forth. Each of these would be a link to the same page
Some of the phrases might appear several times (there are only so many
ways to write something). The objective is to write in natural English
speech, and to focus the anchor text on keyword rich phrases. I do not
pre-plan this -- it just flows out naturally, as a part of what i
write. Content is the reason for the site. Sales support the site (and
my shop), but the site is aimed at readers.

I see that these phrases work very, very well for you, Cat. Great job
in getting a first page google results on many of those terms. Very
impressive indeed. Makes me wish I was working with less competitive
keywords for my 1st SEO project.

however I'm going to be jumping (freefalling?) into the "auto", "car",
"repair","service" keywords phrase realm. i very strongly suspect
what works for you -- honest, good content with great page volume--
isn't going to get my client the same 1st page results.

overture sez:
hoodoo - 63.5/day
dressing - 229.4 /day
No data for phrase:" hoodoo dressing" = 0/day?
VS.
car - 126,328.1 /day
auto - 29,194.8 /day
auto repair - 8,352.4 /day
No data for phrase: "auto repair pennsylvania" = 0/day

seems pretty useless to optimize for "0/day", IMO. Why optimize a
site or page for 0-10 google hits a year? AdWords are looking better
by the second, I think. If I'm going to do SEO for this client I'm
thinking I will need to try for the more competitive phrases even
though they are not a perfect match for him.

I also fear that I'm *not* going to get even respectable rankings
using only the SEO practices that you use. ( good content, lots of
pages, plenty of keywords) I get the feeling I will need to delve
into some "black hat SEO" techniques on top of tried and true ethical
SEO.

Basically, even after i do a through job SEO tuning for my client, it
looks like i will still need to buy/hack/cheese/beg/borrow/steal
backlinks to boost myself into a decent google result on the theme of
automobiles.

Is this SEO worth it? I dont know. If someone could say "it'll
take you approximately a year in google lag/learning time and over
200+ hours to get a 5th page result for the phrase "auto repair", then
could make an informed decision easily. I'd probably still do it for
the learning experience. Too bad it's not that simple, huh? ;o)~

The big "If" for me now is: will adding regional keywords onto my
phrases ( i.e.- "philadelphia", "pa", or "pennsylvania") be worth the
time doing SEO specifically for them? Im sure i could rank 1st for
the phrases, but why would I want to for 0 hits/day? Who knows.
that's, of course, why I'm here: to try and get a feel for not only
"how" to do good SEO, but when to draw the line and hire a "real SEO"
for advice or when to ignore it all together.

thanks for all your input.

dale

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:40:15 GMT, Dale Helstrom
<DHelstrom@FixThisFirst-->Hotmale.com> wrote:

[snip]

I see that these phrases work very, very well for you, Cat. Great job
in getting a first page google results on many of those terms. Very
impressive indeed. Makes me wish I was working with less competitive
keywords for my 1st SEO project.

however I'm going to be jumping (freefalling?) into the "auto", "car",
"repair","service" keywords phrase realm. i very strongly suspect
what works for you -- honest, good content with great page volume--
isn't going to get my client the same 1st page results.

overture sez:
hoodoo - 63.5/day
dressing - 229.4 /day
No data for phrase:" hoodoo dressing" = 0/day?
VS.
car - 126,328.1 /day
auto - 29,194.8 /day
auto repair - 8,352.4 /day
No data for phrase: "auto repair pennsylvania" = 0/day

Cat is pretty impressive when you consider this:
Results 21 - 30 of about 374,000,000
http://www.google.com/search?q=sex&h...&start=20&sa=N

May not be Page 1 but pretty stiff, pardon the potential pun,
competition for that one word term too.

seems pretty useless to optimize for "0/day", IMO. Why optimize a
site or page for 0-10 google hits a year?

If I recall right, Overture uses their own data for the keyword tool.
So hard to say if those numbers matches Google or Yahoo's # of
requests for those words.

Also recall Cat says she optimizes her pages for more than one phrase
apiece. So that one page may get a low number of visits due to a
not-as-popular search phrase ... but the other phrase may be pulling
in 10x that number daily.

AdWords are looking better

by the second, I think. If I'm going to do SEO for this client I'm
thinking I will need to try for the more competitive phrases even
though they are not a perfect match for him.

I also fear that I'm *not* going to get even respectable rankings
using only the SEO practices that you use. ( good content, lots of
pages, plenty of keywords) I get the feeling I will need to delve
into some "black hat SEO" techniques on top of tried and true ethical
SEO.

Be wary of some black hat labeled thoughts; some are out-dated tips
that are still claimed to work [but don't] - some have repercussions
if you are not flying low enough below the radar that your client may
may the price for more so than yourself.

But that's all I will say as I already participated in an ethical SEO
thread - so hit my quota for the week.

Basically, even after i do a through job SEO tuning for my client, it
looks like i will still need to buy/hack/cheese/beg/borrow/steal
backlinks to boost myself into a decent google result on the theme of
automobiles.

Is this SEO worth it? I dont know. If someone could say "it'll
take you approximately a year in google lag/learning time and over
200+ hours to get a 5th page result for the phrase "auto repair", then
could make an informed decision easily. I'd probably still do it for
the learning experience. Too bad it's not that simple, huh? ;o)~

The big "If" for me now is: will adding regional keywords onto my
phrases ( i.e.- "philadelphia", "pa", or "pennsylvania") be worth the
time doing SEO specifically for them?

If they are regional based or only wants clients within that area -
then I think it would be helpful to target them a bit for those
regional terms. Just my opinion though.


Carol

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:55:39 GMT, from_you (AT) nomail (DOT) com (C.W.) wrote:

[snip]
I see that these phrases work very, very well for you, Cat. Great job
in getting a first page google results on many of those terms. Very
impressive indeed. Makes me wish I was working with less competitive
keywords for my 1st SEO project.

however I'm going to be jumping (freefalling?) into the "auto", "car",
"repair","service" keywords phrase realm. i very strongly suspect
what works for you -- honest, good content with great page volume--
isn't going to get my client the same 1st page results.

overture sez:
hoodoo - 63.5/day
dressing - 229.4 /day
No data for phrase:" hoodoo dressing" = 0/day?
VS.
car - 126,328.1 /day
auto - 29,194.8 /day
auto repair - 8,352.4 /day
No data for phrase: "auto repair pennsylvania" = 0/day

Cat is pretty impressive when you consider this:
Results 21 - 30 of about 374,000,000
http://www.google.com/search?q=sex&h...&start=20&sa=N

May not be Page 1 but pretty stiff, pardon the potential pun,
competition for that one word term too.

total agreement with ya there! I'd take a page 2 ranking any day
for any keyword!

seems pretty useless to optimize for "0/day", IMO. Why optimize a
site or page for 0-10 google hits a year?

If I recall right, Overture uses their own data for the keyword tool.
So hard to say if those numbers matches Google or Yahoo's # of
requests for those words.

Also recall Cat says she optimizes her pages for more than one phrase
apiece. So that one page may get a low number of visits due to a
not-as-popular search phrase ... but the other phrase may be pulling
in 10x that number daily.

I meant in no way to slight Cat's pages, keyword phrase selection, or
her SEO abilities.

*ANYONE* getting a #1 ranking for any google search gets my complete
respect. It's damn hard work, and the learning curve is steep. My
point was that for our comparative keywords, ( hoodoo vs auto) I was
looking at a huge difference in daily hits and competition and that I
might need a bit of "black hat" to do nearly as well as she has.

thanks for pointing those things out, Carol.

dale