south carolina widgets vs. widgets south carolina

same words, very different ranking

[dibbern2]

I'm confused with the way my latest widget page ranks. For the first instance (let's say, South Carolina widgets) I'm buried somewhere in the 400's. For the same words, but in a different order (widgets south carolina)I rank 5th.

I thought both searches would show the same serps, except for sites that have one or the other term in the exact word order. I would have expected a difference much smaller than 400 places.

My page, incidently, has a title and H tags that use the phrase "South Carolina widgets".

So why does it rank better for the word order I didn't use?

Any ideas or explanation would be appreciated very much. Thanks.

[tedster]

title and H tags that use the phrase...So why does it rank better for the word order I didn't use?

Sounds like it could be what some people call the "over-optimization penalty" or OOP. But I agree, it's quite odd.

How does anchor text pointing to the page look for word order?

[texasville]

Tedster has it but I would look further to content. How many times does widgets south carolina appear in order even separated by commas or periods in the text. Use the highlighted keywords on the cached pages.