Keyword Research & Quotation Marks

What’s the deal with keyword research and quotation marks? Quite often, you will hear people talking about how you need to check keyword competition in Google using the keyword wrapped in quotation marks. In this quick and easy post I’m going to explain the deal with keyword research and quotation marks, to ensure that you know exactly what this method means for you.

Compare these two searches:

And now with the quotation marks added:

So what’s the deal with keyword research and quotation marks?

Basically, the quotation marks tell Google to search for “exact” keyword results. This means the number of search results that are using that EXACT search string in the specified order (so “magnetic messaging review”). Closely matched results like “review of magnetic messaging” won’t be included in the quotation mark search count.

I like to use quotation marks when researching long-tail keyword phrases, as it gives you an accurate idea of the amount of competition you will be facing when targeting that phrase. Of course if there are sites with high authority, which are ranking for the non-quotation mark search phrase, then you may still have difficulty beating them. However, for the most part you can get a fairly accurate measure of the amount of competition you will face by doing keyword research with quotation marks thrown in for good measure.

For more information on how to search for exact match keyword phrases, as well as understanding search competition, check out my Keyword Research Redux guide.