"How to create..." or "Creating..." or "Create..."

[martin]

I wonder which one of these is best for titles (of course the body matters too, but not so much):

"How to create..." or "Creating..." or "Create..."

What most people will search for?

[chris_f]

I would create 3 pages each targetting a phrase ("How to create..." or "Creating..." or "Create..."). The content can be similar and give the same information, however, to avoid spamming the content will have to be rewritten.

Chris.

[Filipe]

My rule of thumb has been to try to target each word. So you want to target:

"How" "to" "create" and "creating"

So, one option is:

"How to Create X: Creating an X that works."

It won't be seen as spamming, and you'll at least get picked up for all those words.

[Liane]

I may be wrong, but I think trying to optimize for "how" and "to" is a waste of time. Write your body copy in a natural way using both create and creating equally and then write the header something like...

How to create the perfect widget?

If creating the perfect widget is your goal. Here's how to go about it:

[martin]

Actually after I checked my logs nobody searching at Google has quoted "how to" so probably it will be useless anyway.

[paynt]

Look at the results for your answers and see how your competition is capturing the audience for the words you are targeting. The keyword tools are fine but there’s nothing like getting in there and searching.

From the terrific suggestions offered above it would really depend on how much content I had to fill out the terms and how then I could fit specific pages on those terms into a site. Writing different articles I’ve found makes developing pages with keyword targeting like chris_f suggests easier to produce. With small sites with a term like ‘create’ I would probably use a bit of Filipe’s advice and cluster the keywords. If they were important keywords I would weave them not only together on a page but also through the site.

With titles I often come up with 3 to 5 different titles and descriptions I can use for each page. On the page itself for the title try to get what you determine is the most important keyword phrase and then support it’s alternatives through heading tags and in the content. I then vary and rotate the anchor text with the 3 to 5 different titles from pages leading to it.

[Filipe]

Actually after I checked my logs nobody searching at Google has quoted "how to" so probably it will be useless anyway.

Well, you're trying to get *new* users right? Or are you trying just to recapture those folks that have already come to your site?

I'm just saying that using existing traffic isn't necessarily the best way to judge which keywords to target, unless the traffic your getting is the exact kind of traffic you want, and you want to capture more of that market.

[martin]

What do you mean. Target other search engines than Google?