Exact keyword match for meta title and h1 what is best practice?

[nm1977]

How exact should my meta titles and H1 one be compare to the keyword you wish to rank on.

Eksample. When I do a research with google AdWords the keyword tool shows me:

260 monthly searches for house for rent Hua Hin

140 monthly searches for Hua Hin house for rent

70 monthly searches for House for rent in Hua Hin

The first two includes the exact same 5 words while the last one includes the stopword "in".

That google have different search volumens for these very smilair search queries tells me that small differences matters. So how does that effect the way i shoulf write my:

a)meta titles

b)H1

I feel I get better sentences often by reordering the keywords etc.

“Top tips on how to rent house in Hua Hin” Instead of “Top tips if you want a house for rent in Hua Hin”

Do you use stop words like “in” hua hin. (only used in 25% of the searches queries)?

Also would it matter if i write a plural form of a keyword instead of a singular etc propeties and sted of property?

My goal is to write easy to read and unique content but i feel i can make exact matches if required with out compromising to much.

[jlane9]

I agree with you Massimiliano,

Overall that is a great strategy and yes, just because they get more volume does not mean they are the best keywords. Different keywords are used at different stages of the buying cycles. In this case I was just telling Tamir how I would choose the order from those specific combinations of the same 5 words. Assuming he has done his research and those are the keywords he is going to target.

Getting traffic is one step in the game, converting the traffic is another important step as well.

Best Regards,

Joe

[max.favilli]

targeting the keywords with the highest volume can be misleading, they are not necessary the best converting keywords, and since usually everyone prefer to shot at the biggest target competition is fierce

I am not saying it's wrong, but I would be more selective and choose keywords on the base of a variety of factors.

[jlane9]

Hello Tamir,

Realistically to write great content you want to use them all in different variations, singular. plural ect. I would pick the highest volume order of the keywords, in your case: 260 monthly searches for house for rent Hua Hin.

I would use this combination as the url, Begining of description as well as the H1 tag. I would then write some very thoughtful and informative content and add those other variations on the page in a natural flowing conversational way that sounds like natural talk when you read it out loud to yourself. You want to focus on the highest volume words and also build the others in as well so you may rank well for more than 1 combination of those keywords.

Here is the link to rands very informative article about keyword targeting: A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO. Its a must read for sure !

http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization

Hope that helps,

Joe

[max.favilli]

I have seen google algo rank the same page for very similar phrases where the keywords where just changing places, but it's not "always" doing it. You can help him learn that page is a good fit for both queries with the copy of the page.

google knows about synonyms and does often show same or very similar SERP for different keywords which are considered to have the same "exact" meaning and usage in language. But in my experience does treat plurals in a different way.

I would use exact match for title and exact match for h1 if it make sense, but avoiding using unnatural language.

Unfortunatelly SEO is a land where certainity is scarce, and I would recommend testing different versions to find out what works best in your case.