What is the best approach to a keyword that has multiple abbreviations?

[freezedriedmedia]

I have a site for which the primary keyword has multiple abbreviations.

The site is for the computer game "Football Manager", each iteration is often referred to as FM2012, FM12 or Football Manager 2012, the first two can also be used with or without spaces inbetween.

While this is only 3 keywords to target, it means that every key phrase such as "FM2012 Tactics", must also be targeted in 3 ways.

Is there a recommended approach to make sure that all 3 are targeted?

At present I use the full title "Football Manager" in the the title and try to use the shorter abbreviations in the page, I also make sure the title tags always have an alternative e.g

FM2012 Tactics

Two specific questions as well as general tips:

1. Does the <abbr>HTML tag help very much?</abbr>

2. Are results likely to differ much for searches for "FM 2012" and "FM2012" i.e. without the space.

[deltasystems]

Personally I would make the root domain a catch-all for every term. You don't need separate pages for each phrase you want to rank for. If the entire website is about the same thing, there's no need to create landing pages for different phrases. (Google also frowns upon this)

I would limit the usage of the <abbr>tag to once or twice per abbreviation. You also must realize this is onpage SEO, which is great and it does help, but the majority of your ability to rank for your phrases will come from external SEO.</abbr>

[freezedriedmedia]

Thanks for the response.

Would using the abbr tag every single time the abbreviated term is used be considered over the top and effectively detrimental?

Also often my pages are focused on the full phrase e.g. domain.com/football-manager-tactics.html with the full phrase in the title as well.

Would it be dangerous (spammy?) to create a separate page called domain.com/fm-tactics.html purely to help pull in results for this search term?

[deltasystems]

If you take a look at the Adwords Keyword Tool, you can see some phrases get more traffic than others:

• Football Manager 2012 - 27,100 exact searches per month
• fm 2012 - 8,100 exact searches
• fm2012 - 1,900 exact searches

My advice would be to continue with alternating anchor and title tags, but give more preference to phrases that get the most searches. Be sure to include all phrases in the copy of the page as well, but pay mind that the page doesn't look spammy.

Adwords Keyword Tool: <cite>https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal</cite>

Using the <abbr>tag will help. Again, don't overdo it. You will need to take time to think how you can fit all the acronyms in the content body without making it appear like you intentionally did so.</abbr>

Proper usage: <abbr title="Football Manager 2012">fm2012</abbr>