lets say i have a site about horse racing. i wouldnt want to use the word horse as a keyword as there are tons of horse related issues that have nothing to do with horse racing. same applies to the word racing.
how do i address this matter?

Yes. Try to optimize the site for 'horse racing'. By the very nature of search engines this means you will have some relevancy for both 'horse' and 'racing' but less so than if you optimize for the phrase.

Here's a rough example, don't take these numbers as gospel. Lets say you have a link to your site that says Horse Racing

A search engine would look at this links and say:

This link is saying this site is 100% about 'horse racing'
This link is saying this site may be 50% about 'horse'
This link is saying this site may be 50% about 'racing'

So my tip would be to use the phrase 'horse racing' together as much as possible in your on page text, tags, and inbound links. Of course I would include variations of this like 'horse race', 'horses racing' or whatever else.

My site is a good example of this effect. I've tried to optimize the index page for Timesheet Software. I rank 7 or 8 for this in Google, rank 25 or so for 'timesheet', and obviously rank nowhere for 'software'.


Hope this helps.

Choosing keyword phrase is very important .... Choose keyword phrase what people are actually searching for ...... use a research tool such as Wordtracker or Overture ....
yes you should never optimize you site for general keyword "horse" or "racing" bcoz they are rarely indicative of what your site is really about...

OK

and technically i shouldnt have problems defining phrases as keywords in my meta keywords line, right?

for example:

<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="horse racing, horse races, horse racing tracks">

and an off topic question: i put a link to my site in my signature.. i noticed that in in both your signatures there are links to your websites, but the urls dont appear in them. has what i done ok, or am i violating froum rules??

IMO, you have done nothing that is against the forum rule ... but still i dont know much about the forum rules.... If its again the forum rule then i m sure there are moderators and administrator to tell u ....

the sig link does not appear until you make ten posts.

the meta keywords tag is best used for alternate versions not in the copy or common misspellings. many SEOs no longer use them.

Advertising.com have released a product called Dart Search which will help to advise on keywords and phrases etc which afre actually being searched for and I think thats what should be focussed on.

<< Moderator Removed: Please setup a signature via your user profile >>

Yes!

Avi Wilensky