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Keywords that are often abbreviated?
kurt
Posts: 361
Joined: 10 May 11
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10 May 14 12:21 am

Keywords that are often abbreviated?

Usually when you are writing and you have a phrase that is often abbreviated, I think you're suppose to spell the phrase out completely the first time you use it with the abbreviation in parentheses next to it, But, then on, you should abbreviate it, right?

But, what if you are wanting to rank for keywords that both have it spelled out and have it abbreviated? In my article I used the phrase spelled out in some places, and abbreviated in others for the sake of getting in more keywords. The article still reads okay, but is this frowned upon and unprofessional looking? Should I do it anyway, when I can rank for several more keywords by doing so?
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tankctrlr
Posts: 210
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11 May 14 3:03 am

 It sounds like you're creating this content for search engines rather than for the people who will be reading it. I know you need to rank this page but with google's recent changes, optimizing keywords has lost its ranking power and now it's even more easier to OVER optimize keywords and get a penalty for doing so.

Whether you use one keyword or a few (It's usually better to just target one keyword/topic per page), the content should read not just ok, but really good; it should be so good that the reader actually reads past the headline, and opening. So good, that the reader reads the whole page including your calls-to-action, and hopefully will be impressed enough with the quality and value that you have given them that they start to consider what you have to sell/recommend to them.

The search engines don't buy from you, people do, you should create the content for people. What will EARN more links and social shares? A SEO optimized page that reads ok, or a page that offers quality, value, and actually helps the reader?

There are best practices for on-page SEO we all should follow, but over optimizing and over thinking it can be harmful. If we would spend the same amount of brain power and effort on creating higher quality content instead of little geeky gray-hat SEO tweaks (that don't work anymore), we would be better off. In my humble opinion.

PS.
If you need a more definitive answer:
- Use the full keyword in the title tag once and in the headline once.
- Use the full keyword NATURALLY throughout along with any related keywords (like abbreviated ones).
- 'Target' a topic or answer a question, don't target a keyword in itself, this sounds weird but google is ranking pages these days based on whether or not the pages content answers the searcher's search query. And, searchers are doing longer and longer tail keyword searches, and asking more and more questions in them. (How to stop ____ from ____, do I need to ____ before ____, 'Plans for building a chicken coop for beginners'. etc.)
- Make it an awesome page! It's not worth the time and effort to try and rank mediocre webpages these days with little SEO tweaks, especially if your competition is going to make bigger and better pages.
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kurt
Posts: 361
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11 May 14 7:26 pm

 According to the teachings of Andrew Hansen, who's suppose to be an seo expert, in his recent webinars he teaches how you can now get up to 30 - 50 related keywords in one article. So no longer do we have to have 20 articles to rank for 20 keywords, you can rank for more than that with one article. Unless the rules have changed again. Mark had him in a recent webinar so surely not.

When someone types something into google, google doesn't know exactly what they're looking for. There are a lot of things they could be looking for when they type something into google. So if you cover a few of those possible topics in your article with related keywords, the person searching is more likely to find what they're looking for in your article and google is also going to like your articles because you're giving people what they want.

I try to get several related keywords into each article, but I don't sacrifice the quality of the content for it. I only use keywords if they will sound natural in my article. I don't want them to read funny. I don't force them.

Personally, I think my articles are very good, better than they could ever be if I paid someone else to write them. I'm not a good writer or anything, I would love to be able to outsource that part. I just research my topics very well, and I don't think anybody else would be able to word things in the right way since they haven't researched the topics like I have.

I really don't want to give out my topic, and sadly I can't think of another single example of a keyword that is sometimes abbreviated. So, Lets just pretend that my keyword is United States of America. Sometimes that is abbreviated as USA. The first time you use a phrase that is often abbreviated, you want to spell it out for people because some people might not know what the letters stand for. But, from then on you can just use the abbreviation so you don't have to write it out every time. Or at least that's the ideal way to go I think. But, because I'm trying to get related keyword phrases in my article, they will have other words in front of them or after them. I hope this isn't too confusing, United States of America is a bad example. I can't think of anything to add to that. But, basically, in some places in my article I have spelled out my keywords, and in other places I have abbreviated them - so that I can rank for my variations.

I'm not solely writing for the search engines, it doesn't change the quality of my content any. It's still good content, just tweaked a little to help with ranking. I did it because It could make the difference between a stream of free traffic and a trickle. I'm just not sure if I should be doing that or not.
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tankctrlr
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12 May 14 2:55 am

 HI Kurt,

As long as it reads effortlessly and is completely comprehensible it will be fine, but if it's not you risk leaving the reader asking questions to themselves and it will muffle the point you're making and/or any good ideas you are trying to put out.

You also should be consistent with terms, names, phrases, etc. If you use U.S.A. then later use US and then U.S., it won't be consistent and will cause friction for the reader. You don't want the reader to have to stop reading and again, ask themselves questions like "did he mean ____ or ____?", even if it's just for a second.

To address the SEO side of things, what that expert said seems alright, we have always been told by experts that the more words on a page, the more words you can potentially rank for, even ranking for words/phrases you never would have thought of. This is another great reason to create bigger longer content.

So as long as it's natural sounding and consistent I think it would be fine. Having said that, sometimes you just can't have it all lol, you got to leave things out and maybe address or 'target' those things at some other time and place.

I'm no SEO expert or anything I'm not even a good writer (yet), but I will say this, it's the off-page 'SEO' that's going to bring in most of your traffic in the end. I believe we all find that out when we start to do the marketing side of affiliate-marketing.

This is why I always tell people to do the basics of on-page SEO (the mechanics) and go out and spend most of your time and effort on doing awesome stuff with the off-page SEO (marketing), I don't even call it SEO anymore by the way; I call it Inbound Marketing because when you do inbound-marketing and everything that goes with that; the 'SEM' takes care of itself.
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