We all like to think ranking number one for those perfect one word phrases will be the pinnacle of the SEO work on our site and the answer to any woes we might have on our website.  However, recent research from HitWise has shown that the number of keywords your potential customers are using when searching is increasing.

HitWise’s research shows that in the US the number of people searching with only one keyword reduced by 3% in the last year and the number of people searching with 8 or more keywords increased by 22%.

It would appear that as searchers get more savvy they are using more keywords to ensure that the SERPs they see in engines such as Google, are more tailored to their needs ensuring that they don’t have to wade through lots of sites that aren’t what they are looking for before they find what they want.

Why not have a look at the keywords you are targeting and see how many of these 4 or more word search terms are driving traffic to the site and compare this to the number of 1 word keywords that are doing as well.  You might find that ranking for some of these longer keywords could help your website get more traffic.

In a lot of cases your company name (if this is one word) will be a key traffic driver to your website, so ensuring you are number one for this is important, regardless of the fact that it is only one word.