How do you optimize for compound keywords

[stephenfishman]

What is the best way to handle keywords like "switchplate covers"? The key word may be seen as either a 2 or 3 word phrase, depending how you handle the compound term: "switch plate" or "switchplate"

In google KW it shows different results for switch plate vs switchplate as well as using cover vs covers.

I've tried using all the variations in my descriptions, titles and H2s  but I think this is diluting them all.  Can anyone show me best practice guidelenes or examples of good solutions to these kinds of compound key words?

Thanks

Handcrafter

[stephenfishman]

I use google analytics- Is there something special I should set up to track this?  Or is it something to do with filtering?

Or any ideas on where to learn to set it up to track conversions and traffic for this 1 group of terms would be a great help.

Thank you for your comments EGOL

Handcrafter

[stephenfishman]

Thanks Charles- This is really really helpful.  The products I show on www.stowecraft.com do not have have brand names and they are all artisan-made & unique. So naming the products and their categories is crucial - and this compund name issue comes up over and over again.

Your suggestion about using the plural on the category page and the singular on the product page may work. But after reading Rands "singular vs plural"  I am thinking that keeping my focus on the singular will increase conversions. I'll try to test it with ppc ads.

Best wishes

Handcrafter

[EGOL]

Some term variants like this convert a lot better than others. My money is on "covers" - but I could be wrong.

So I would use the term where (traffic * conversion rate) will be highest.

If you don't have tracking to get a conversion rate you can get some data with Adwords testing.

[EGOL]

Some term variants like this convert a lot better than others. My money is on "covers" - but I could be wrong.

So I would use the term where (traffic * conversion rate) will be highest.

If you don't have tracking to get a conversion rate you can get some data with Adwords testing.

[EGOL]

This is a really good answer. Accurate, complete, very generous. Nice.

[SL_SEM]

Usually Google and Bing do a good job of figuring out when terms are similar unless they have completely separate meanings (see Rand's response on singular vs plural). In your case if you go to google and type in "switchplate" it actually shows the "Did you mean switch plate?".

Also if you do a search on "Switch Plate" you notice Amazon comes up first with the word separated.

So those two notes are some big clues as to what direction to go for that example.

Either way I would use PPC as a playground here and run exact match ad campaigns for both versions of the term, find out which gets more traffic for you, which gets better conversions, and then optimize for that one first. Go with the data.

Anecdotaly I have heard singular is better for e-commerce as plural is usually used in language when talking about an item informationally. So I would probably go for singular and throw in a couple of plural versions on the page like an h2 or h3 link for "Other switch plates".

This could also be handled by doing your high level category pages as plural, and specific product pages as singular. I would probably keep a term like "switch plate" consistently separated in my copy though if I saw this was the big winner in my PPC test, but that is the copywriter/editor in me begging for consistency and not the SEO tweaker going for every version. In the end I still want my site to be user friendly and clean.

[RyanKent]

Take a look at the traffic on each version of the keyword phrase. Your primary focus should be the version of the phrase which generates the most traffic. I would also try to use each variation of the phrase throughout the article when possible.