green widgets ./. widgets green

Just another confusion

[Petrocelli]

I just found that the order of 2 keywords (no phrase search!)
matters.

Didn't notice this behaviour before and it doesn't make
sense, does it?

[jimbeetle]

Hi Petrocelli,

Welcome to Webmaster World. [webmasterworld.com]

To some extent most SEs consider the order of keywords in searches and word order can refer significantly different things, such as new plays in widget as opposed to new widget plays.

It's always best to target a variety of keyword combinations to capture the different ways surfers search.

Jim

[Shoestring]

Welcome.

It makes perfect sense, if you ask me.

We've grabbed several #1 positions by reversing the order of highly competitive two word phrases to capture surfers who type them in "backwards" for whatever reason...

[cornwall]

And remember you not only get different answers for

green widgets ....widgets green

but also different answers again for the singular as in

green widget...widget green

So you need to cover all 4 (8 if the other word also has a plural, in this example green does not)

[kaled]

I was accused by another webmaster of spamming because I use a list of keywords like this at the bottom each index page on my website. Just out of interest, how do other people ensure that they catch various keyword combos?

[Morgan]

I think this has changed recently, I think the proximity and order of keywords in phrases has increased in importance. I used to be able to combine phrases so all the words were close together but made sense and it worked fairly well. Like the title would say "New & Used Blue Widgets" to target "Blue Widgets" and "Used Widgets".

But now even being one word separated or out of order really drains the strength of a term. It makes sense, but it also makes more work for me.

[ciml]

Back when people used AltaVista, I doubt that many knew about the NEAR operator. In my opinion, making it default was one of the subtle things that made people switch to Google.

[aravindgp]

I have noticed for highly competitive keywords,
the top 2 sites are mostly not moving for any either green widget or widget green.They seems to be stable in their positions but where as all other listing seems to vary particularly last 5.

Can anyone explain more on this?