multi-word key phrase combination rankings

will all combinations, ABC; AB,C; A,B,C; A,BC rank?

[Tapolyai]

I am torn between a high volume key phrase of two words, and a lower volume, three-word key phrase, but still with sufficient traffic. Two of the three words overlap.

High volume key phrase B C.
Lower volume key phrase A B C.

If I target A B C, will I also be working against the "B C" crowd? It makes sense, as there will be no delineation between the words.

Example:
quick brown fox (1.8mm pages) vs brown fox (40mm pages).

If I target quick brown fox, will there be some "brown fox" traffic too?

Will there be a negative impact? Will on of the big three SEs decide one or the other, but not both?

Thanks!

[edited by: Tapolyai at 11:00 pm (utc) on April 11, 2007]

[domni]

This is a FANTASTIC question! ...One, in fact, that I wondered myself for a very long time. A source I consider very reliable (my SEO mentor, in fact) once told me that optimizing for say "quick brown fox" could possibly detract from my optimization efforts for the more general keyterm "brown fox".

However, I found this NOT to be true. I am currently ranking Top 10 on one of the major SEs for two of my major keyphrases similar to this. So, it is possible to optimize with hopes of ranking for both. I did! ;)

Hope this helps.