Question about title seo

I have a question about a newish site I have and how to use titles for it. I will use home loans for my example.

Let's say I have a site: wachoviahomeloanconsolidation dot com

And that I've previously used the term "Wachovia home loan consolidation" for my title tags and h1 tags, and also my anchor text for incoming links. I am not ranking very well for this particular term, think like page 10 or worse. But, it turns out I'm at the bottom of page 1 for "wachovia consolidation" without quotes, which gets more searches per month. Should I change my title tags and h1 and anchor text to "Wachovia consolidation" to try to capitalize on this? Or should I leave it as is and hope I continue to rank for this term?

I know this is pretty basic seo but until recently I've been strictly selling porn and they don't teach these things very well on adult webmaster boards.

I guess what I want to know is how much changing my main keyword to the shorter version of the term will affect my ranking for "wachovia consolidation", or if it would be pretty much the same if I left it as the longer version.

I think I know the answer but would like some validation.

My guess would be that if anything it'll help you continue to rank for that keyword phrase. Especially if you continue to build links using that shorter keyword.

the reason you might not be ranking as effectively for the longer tail keyword is that it might be TOO long tail and maybe there arent enough monthly searches in google for it (I could be wrong, i didnt do the research, but you might have)

Don't forget about keyword saturation throughout your content. having a domain name with the keyword, h1 tags, and backlinks with that keyword phrase is one thing, but make sure the keyword is used plenty throughout your articles and content as well.

also don't forget about your page titles, descriptions, and meta keywords.

I'd suggest using google webmaster tools or another similar program to monitor which keyword phrases you rank for overall, and then continue creating h1 tags and content that reflect those words, and build links accordingly.

i hope this wasn't too basic, that's just my perspective, let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks coach! I think Im going to go ahead and go after the shorter keyword. It has around 6k monthly searches whereas the longer version only has ~2k. As far as keyword saturation, I've used the longer version all throughout my articles, categories, links, meta descriptions and all that stuff.

And yeah I really should start using google's webmaster tools again. I guess at one point I just had too many accounts with different emails and got tired of dealing with it.

This seems like a silly thread now that I made it, I just wasn't sure how much I could change my rank for the shorter keyword if I started actively targeting it since I was already ranking fairly well with the longer version. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about SEO but then this simple question came along and stumped me. Thanks again.

At first glance the keyword with the most traffic seems like a good decision, however it really depends on what you're offering on your site. Are you selling products, do you have advertisements, CPA offers, etc.

Sometimes the long-tail keywords are more likely to convert, so you'd actually make more money with less traffic. Again, it depends on your content, user, and goal.

Hope this helps!