| Your keyword research will ultimately dictate how (and | | | | yourself if you want. |
| if) visitors find your site. | | | | Search Overture's tool for "fly fishing reel". Here are |
| Your job in this stage of the site building process is to | | | | the top 3 results that I get:fly fishing reel 5179fly fishing |
| find out the exact phrases that people type into the | | | | rods and reel 377saltwater fly fishing reel 126 |
| search engines, when they are looking for information | | | | Overture data is measured over the previous month. |
| or products relating to your niche. | | | | To get comparable data at Wordtracker, I found out |
| Example. Your website is about fly fishing. On it, you | | | | how many times Wordtracker estimates the phrase is |
| promote fishing tackle, rods, reels etc etc. If I was a fly | | | | searched for at Google in 24 hours, and multiplied by |
| fisherman looking to buy a reel, what am I going to | | | | 30. |
| type into Google to find relevant sites where I might | | | | Here is what Wordtracker returns for those top 3 |
| buy a reel? After all, that is what you need to know as | | | | Overture phrases (Google searches per month):fly |
| the webmaster behind a fly fishing site. | | | | fishing reels 390fly fishing rods and reels 60saltwater |
| I might type in any of the following:fly fishing reelbuy fly | | | | fly fishing reels 120 |
| fishing reelfly fishing reel reviewand so on. | | | | For the phrase "fly fishing reel", Overture says it was |
| However, just because you think of a phrase related | | | | searched for 5179 times in January, whereas |
| to this niche, does not mean that anyone is actually | | | | Wordtracker puts that figure closer to 390. |
| searching for that phrase. That is where keyword | | | | For the phrase "fly fishing rods and reels", Overture |
| research tools come in. Not only will your research | | | | says 377, Wordtracker says 60. |
| highlight phrases that are actually being searched for, it | | | | For the phrase "seawater fly fishing reels", Overture |
| will also find a lot more phrases than you could | | | | says 126, Wordtracker says 120. |
| realistically come up with yourself, and in a fraction of | | | | Go on, try it yourself |
| the time. | | | | Not convinced? What I suggest you do, is try this |
| How many "fly fishing reel" related phrases can you | | | | experiment with several different phrases.e.g. My old |
| think of? 5? 10 at a push? | | | | search on Overture for "pheromone" suggests that |
| Well, I just checked at Wordtracker, and in seconds, it | | | | the phrase pheromone was searched for 54,905 |
| returned 68 phrases that people are actually looking | | | | times last month. |
| for. This is pure gold! | | | | Wordtracker estimates that at Google pheromone |
| Wordtracker also provides me with essential data, like | | | | was searched for 5940 times in a month. |
| how many people are looking for each phrase, and | | | | Which do I rely on? Wordtracker of course. |
| how many competing web pages there are for each | | | | While the two measurements cannot really be directly |
| term. | | | | compared (as they provide search information based |
| I have 100% faith in the data returned from | | | | on different engines), I have found that the number |
| Wordtracker based on the results I have seen from | | | | reported by Wordtracker do correlate very well with |
| various keywords I have targeted over the years. I | | | | the traffic I receive when I get a #1 in Google. |
| cannot say the same for other keyword tools which | | | | So where does this leave all the keyword tools that |
| use Overture's Suggestion tool for "demand" data, so | | | | are available? |
| before going with a free keyword research tool, read | | | | Here is some advice on Choosing a Keyword |
| the following true story:. | | | | Research Tool. |
| "A couple of years ago, I carried out keyword | | | | If you find a keyword tool that looks promising, ask |
| research for a web page I was creating about | | | | yourself: |
| pheromones. I was going to send my traffic to a | | | | 1. Does this tool also provide supply and demand |
| merchants site and get commission on any sale | | | | figures for each phrase? |
| generated. Using the Overture tool, I found 4 or 5 | | | | Without supply and demand, the phrases are useless, |
| terms with reportedly 47000 + searches in recent | | | | because there is no way of choosing the highest |
| weeks.... and that is just at Overture. | | | | demand, lowest competition phrases from the list. |
| I thought, hey, great. There should be several times this | | | | Many of the phrases may have hundreds of |
| many searches originating from Google. I created a | | | | thousands of competing pages in Google. If you don't |
| couple of pages and optimized them. I got #1 position | | | | have these figures, how can you be accurately target |
| on MSN, and later, #1 on Google too for some of my | | | | phrases? |
| chosen terms. | | | | If supply and demand is supplied, the next question to |
| When I saw my rankings, I could see the $$$ signs in | | | | ask is: |
| front of my eyes. Two days later I had received just 6 | | | | 2. Where does the demand data come from? |
| visitors to my top ranking pages. My millions were | | | | You can quickly check this by running a search in the |
| melting away before my eyes. | | | | tool, and at Overture, and comparing the numbers. If |
| I checked on WordTracker and found that in the last | | | | demand figures are the same, you know the demand |
| month, there has only been 41 searches for my main | | | | was retrieved from Overture. |
| keyword according to Wordtracker (1 or 2 searches a | | | | If the data comes from Overture, would you trust it? |
| day)". | | | | I have not yet found a tool as good or as accurate as |
| Let's just take a quick example - you can try it | | | | Wordtracker for keyword research. |