Keyword Research (dash or no dash)

[kchandler]

I have a client that has been optimizing for "print and apply" for the past 5 months. Yesterday they decided it was more grammatically correct to use "print-and-apply."

There question to me was "is this going to effect our SEO?"

So...

I checked the difficulty using the keyword analysis tool, both keywords had the same broad/exact adwords traffic as well as difficulty percentage. When reviewing the top 25 listings for each keyword it looks like the same sites rank in the SERPs between 1-8 and then after that it is completely different.

So, is there a better keyword to target? Are these two keywords different enough to truly have separate search results?
The top 8 results didn't even target "print-and-apply" in there content or title tags...

Thanks for the input/discussion - Kyle

[kchandler]

Agreed, i just found it odd that they currently rank for "print and apply" but not for "print-and-apply" it leads me to believe that if we did target one way or another it could influence rankings. I would be intrigued if anyone else has seen this before.

[Bevelwise]

I don't believe the use of hyphens as a keyword target is a helpful strategy.  I would reference url's as an explanation to your client saying that search engines realize that hyphens in urls mean spaces.  Although, I don't believe that users are using actual hyphens in there search queries enough to merit including these in your strategy.  Either way with or without Google is going to broad match these websites as the same, which you have done a good job verifying because when you checked the results for both search queries they were very similar.

"print and apply" would still be the keyword I would target if that's what they are going for.