Longer Terms

[noob_0001]

Longer phrases are supose to be easier than phrases with a couple terms to get traffic for. So why do I get several times the traffic for a 2 term phrase than I get for a 4 term phrase? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I thought that the more general a term is the harder it is to score well.

[thing2b]

Although more general terms (shorter terms) are harder to score well on, they are used more often by searchers as well as sites. For some short terms, many people using google will look at many more pages. As you use less search terms, the more unrelated site you get so the deeper into the results you need to look.

As shorter terms are more general, searchers using them are less likely to find what they want and so need to look and more pages of results. They eventually look at enough pages of results to find your site.

When a person uses many specific terms, they know what they want, they do not need to look at as many resulting sites to find what they want.

Brain Fried?
Mine is...

[noob_0001]

Thamks thing2b, so is it normal to rank #8 for a 2 word term and #1 for a 4 word phrase? I did a little looking today to see the ranking.

[thing2b]

I would say that "to rank #8 for a 2 word term and #1 for a 4 word phrase" can be very good, depending on how compeditive the two phrases are.

Remember that on most search engines (google), being ranked 8th means that you are on the first page. This makes a lot of difference compared to being on the second page.