Can someone advise me on Syntax of searching

[Mark_A]

I have started to target "widget thinges" on a site hoping that my work on that will also stand me in good stead for a search for "widget thing" a subset of "widget thinges". At the moment I am a long way from page 1 listing for "widget thinges" at pos 92 and "widget thing" at pos 79.

Will my focus on the word "thinges" also improve results on the word "thing"?

[tedster]

This is a tough one to answer simply, because the situation is not simple at all. Google today uses very complex scoring for relationships between spelling variations, typos, synonyms, stemmed variations of the same word root -- and to some degree even commonly related topics and subtopics (traditionally called co-occurring terms).

Of course, the strongest weight is still given to an exact match to the user's query. Whether your approach will work for you or not depends very much on Google's specific usage data about the particular word in question. User intention matters a lot to - and they have a monster pile of data about which kinds of results seem to satisfy different small variations in search terms.

[Mark_A]

Hi tedster, well it is a shame that it is not more simple.

Perhaps I will have to work both words into the same pages to be sure I get some rankings for both. But that will dilute the effect for each of them if I am not able to do it once.

[tedster]

It was more of a simple text match situation in the early days of search - but the limitations of that kind of algorithm showed up pretty quickly.

[Mark_A]

Shame, makes it all the more complicated to rank for two related words.

This morning I am
pos 92 for widget thinges which I targetted and
pos 79 for widget thing which I did not directly target

So perhaps in that instance there is some matching going on as the one I am not targetting, the one that is the shortenned version is ranking better than the one I am targetting, the longer version. But why the shortenned version is ranking better than the one I was targetting is a mystery to me.

Then on another pair of words I am :

widget thinges (which I targetted) pos 83
widget thing not in first 30 pages

Which is perhaps more what I expected. The one that was specifically targetted ranking better than the short version of the same word. But the shortenned version not being in the first 30 pages is a problem because it is a popular term on which I have to do well in due course.

[Mark_A]

And, on top of that I have an issue with targetting a three word term and then not ranking for a two word subset of that.

I have targetted special widget system for which I am at pos 17
But for special widget I am on position 200

I suppose for this it may be more straightforward, it is much easier to rank for a three word term as it is less likely to appear in that order on a webpage so competition is reduced.

[piatkow]

As an aside I once had a common typo on a page pointed out to me. I left it as it was as I was ranking so well for that specific typo.

I must say that these days I often find Google too clever for its own good when handling alternative spellings / typos.

[Mark_A]

So, is it better to :

1) target the word "thing" on site hoping google will list you when people search for "thinges" or

2) target the word "thinges" hoping google will list you when people search for "thing"..

I would suppose it is 2. Anyone?

[tedster]

It really depends on what actions you take to "target" any word. As a general rule, if you want to be found for a particular query you will have a better chance when that exact word or phrase is on the page. Exact text match is not gone as a relevance factor, just heavily influenced by many other signals.

[Mark_A]

It really depends on what actions you take to "target" any word. As a general rule, if you want to be found for a particular query you will have a better chance when that exact word or phrase is on the page. Exact text match is not gone as a relevance factor, just heavily influenced by many other signals.

Aha, yes, I am expecting the exact term(s) will probably have to be in the title, H1 and possibly H2 and body text. I also have it in inward link anchor text from many other pages on the site.