Hello,
Thanks for contacting us.
Ideally, it is always a good practice to use your keywords as a phrase rather than placing them individually. When you use your keyword as a phrase, it also provides context to the article at the same time you won’t lose SEO juice. Rank Math also follows this approach and we suggest you do the same.
The focus keyword should be the same keyword that your potential customers will use to find you. Users will neither use only photography nor workshops to find you. They will use the full phrase and that is what you should be targeting as well.
Also, if you break your keyword into multiple keywords then the first keyword will be treated as the primary keyword and the rest as the secondary keywords. As primary keywords are the ones that most closely defines the contents of the web page, it is better to use them as a phrase.
However, if the keywords can’t be used naturally then you can also use a variation of them but it might not attract the search engines the way using the exact keyword would.
In case it helps, there are many advantages of using long-tail keywords. For more details regarding the benefits of using long-tail keywords, you can check out this article: https://neilpatel.com/blog/long-tail-keywords-seo/
We only look for the exact match to keep the plugin fast and accurate. For example, using photography workshops dorset or dorset photography workshops would mean the same thing to Google but we look for the exact match. This is a shortcoming in Rank Math that we will work on rectifying soon.
Please let us know if that answers your question, or if any extra detail might be helpful.
Thanks!
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
