Acronyms and handling them?

What thoughts do you have towards optimizing acronyms or TLAs?

[jtoddv]

I am in the process of dealing with a client who wants to optimize for an 3 letter acronym, but the best part is that the acronym is a 3 letter word itself.

I was wondering what the rest of you thought about doing optimization for acronyms? And to spice it up even more, what if that special acronym spells a real 2, 3, or 4 letter word (ie. "IT")?

Would you tell the client NO? Would you try to do it? Would you even attempt to do against sites with well over 5,000 backward links, when you have 20 to start out with?

I am very curious to see how others would handle this situation. Let me know what you think?

thanks,
Justin

[korkus2000]

Is it a stop word like "the"?

[gsx]

I would use the <acronym> tag on all the occurances - many engines will index it in the same way as alt tags for images.

But, if it is a real word - you will need to explain to the client that this work will involve a bit of time to implement without increasing the position for a search on that word alone. Leave it to them to decide. (But if the acronym begins with S and end in X, I wouldn't bother :))

[fathom]

something like - SEO not bad because it is a very succinct and normally singular topic.

However somthing like CAR which the TLA has nothing to do with vehicles - alot of bloody work for next to no returns.

[pageoneresults]

I am in the process of dealing with a client who wants to optimize for an 3 letter acronym, but the best part is that the acronym is a 3 letter word itself.

Is that acronym something that is being searched? If it is, then by all means go for it. You will need to carefully plan your strategy and work that acronym into the theme of the site.

Using the <acronym> tag is also an added plus as mentioned by gsx.

Sprinke the acronym throughout the content and also make sure you explain to the user what the acronym means.

If it is not a term that is being used by searchers, I wouldn't hassle with it. Although, you will probably pick up positions if you use it throughout the site.

If everyone else is competing for that acronym and there is the disparity in backwards links as you mention above, the client better have a reasonable budget! ;)

[jtoddv]

Thanks for your input guys, I appreciate it. The acronym is 'HIT'. Now, it is searched for I am sure (I mean in the context that client cares about), but the results people are finding are not what they want to see. Search for 'hit' and you find links to DirectHit.com, hitbox.com, gostat.com (hit counter) among some other big names. These are not relevant to <acronym> HIT </acronym>, not even close. I fear going up against these big sites.

Another bad thing is that the words that make up the acronym are not common at all, but I guess if you are familiar with the acronym, you are at least familiar with one, maybe two of the words, which would help in a refined search.

I think it would be a decent amount of work for very minimal payoff, given the amount of actual searches for this specific subject. I will explain the situation to the client and see.

Thanks again,
Justin