Should Words be Adjacent for Google?

Will this page be ranked?

[Jon12345]

Let's assume I want to target the following phrase:

"keyword1 keyword2"

If my page does not have those keywords in the exact phrase, will it still be ranked in Google?

e.g. My page reads "blah blah keyword1 blah blah blah blah keyword2 blah blah."

Will it still appear in the SERPS?

Will it rank better if the exact phrase is shown rather than the words spread out?

Regards,

Jon

[diamondgrl]

Yes, it would be ideal to put them together, if only because people (like me) sometimes put quotes around a phrase to get an exact match. I believe proximity also plays a factor in Google's non-exact-match algorithm as well.

[billygg]

in reality, it makes sense to put them together, just be careful as google uses much less keyword density on page now. in the travel area, ive seen sites come up under 2 word keywords, with 1 of them words not even being on the page. just be carefull about on page content regards to keywords.

[DerekH]

Yes it will work, but proximity really matters.
One of my sites is named equivalent to
Big Example Website Name

It comes first in 1.2 million for Website Name, but only manages 21st for Name Website, and is beaten hands down by another of mine which only has Name Website in the body text, not in inbound links, title or <H1>

Proximity and order both matter.
DerekH