By
John Alexander
This month,
let's talk about fine tuning our receptive abilities. We all
know how easy it is to fall into a certain pattern of
thinking. To some search engine marketers, the term "keyword
research" simply means that we work very hard at studying
keywords. We all know keyword selection is the single most important
aspect of search engine marketing.
However,
regardless of how keen your keyword researching skills are,
using tools like Wordtracker,
I also want to encourage you to start expanding your focus and
even occasionally shifting it entirely to embrace an even bigger
picture.
Think
laterally about what value you can add to your target audience.
In order to do this you must first understand what it is THEY
really want.
I use
to enjoy asking people questions like, "if you were
searching for this product, what might you type into a search
engine?" You might do some brainstorming and get
interesting responses. However, once I realized the power of Wordtracker
and how it can be used to actually identify the target audiences
behavior, I completely changed my style of questioning, when
talking with people who I might feel are part of my target
audience.
In
other words, people are using the Internet as a "tool"
in their everyday life.
Shifting Focuses within Research:
If we shift our focus to simply
ask ourselves what the overall purpose of this tool is, we'll
get many different answers. By broadening our thinking style, we
can open avenues which relate to a topic which relates to a
second topic which relates to a third topic which relates
directly to our target audience.
So for
example, our target audience may be "travelers".
Who are these
travelers and what kind of "tool" is the
Internet for them?
How might they be using the Internet?
Give it some
thought...if they are travelers, perhaps they are:
Now in this
short list, we might ask what each of these groups might doing
with the Internet?
What kind of a tool is the Internet to each of them?
So to expand
this, let's break it down a little more.
-
taking
a business trip
-might be looking for an area map
-looking for places to dine
-looking for accommodations
-looking for transportation
-looking for travel arrangements or airfare
-looking for airfare
-
going
on a vacation
-might be looking for an area map
-looking for local attractions
-looking for places to dine
-looking for accommodations
-looking for transportation
-looking for travel arrangements or airfare
-looking for fun things to do
-looking for historical information
-
thinking
of moving their residence or relocating
-might be looking for an area map
-looking for community information
(for example details about a specific community)
-looking for historical information
-looking for a REALTY service
-looking for transportation
-looking for driving directions
-looking for travel arrangements or airfare
-looking for fun things to do
You
understand that lateral thinking and brainstorming can enable us
to come up with all kinds of site features, articles and content
that will attract a specific audience. It's easy to see
how strategies could be built to attract these audiences. When I
write about these things, I try to keep my suggestions pretty
generic to encourage YOU to explore your own lateral thinking
potential.
The
more you practice, the easier it gets. Particularly if you are
using Wordtracker
correctly.
Some other simple examples of behaviors are:
Example 1:
Weddings
Someone using the Internet as a tool to organize their wedding
plans might be wanting information about:
-
Wedding
cakes
-
Limousine
services
-
Photographers
-
Rental
Halls
-
Wedding
garments and tuxedos
-
Ideal
photo locations
-
Specialized
gifts
-
Honeymoon
travel destinations
-
add your
own ideas
-
add more
ideas
-
Now
suppose we build a theme related site, with all of these
services so that with one simple e-mail, a person could get
quotes on all aspects of their wedding?
-
How about
a sequential auto-responder that gives you a day be day
count down of your wedding planner to ensure nothing is left
out?
-
Think
about the SEO potential while using a library
page promotion strategy?
Example
2:
Someone who is shopping for products to
purchase:
-
Often
wants to read reviews first, to compare one model with
another model.
-
Instead
of offering typical product pictures with shopping cart, why
not try a product review of the top selection of products
with comprehensive reviews educating your reader about how
each brand compares to the other.
-
Alternately
you could offer comparisons of the best bargain
brands
The point
is, that this type of page saves a shopper from running all
over the place to compare one thing with another. It saves
them time and delivers value. Make sure you do your
Wordtracker research with your lateral thinking cap on.
Example
3:
Someone who is operating a CD warehouse
might include a library strategy featuring dozens of "song
lyrics".
-
Is it
safe to say that people who love song lyrics probably listen
to music?
-
Make sure
to use care concerning copyrights on lyrics that may be
owned by someone else.
-
Try
researching song lyrics in Wordtracker top to discover loads
of themes.
Okay, you
have may have read about these examples in other articles I have
written.
It's time for you to put your "lateral thinking" cap
on now and really start focusing on the
behaviors of YOUR specific target audience.
How do you do
this?
Here is an
easy exercise you can try.
1. Identify
the product or service or solution that you are trying to market
online.
(For this example, let's say I am selling Real Estate.)
Now lets look for hot terms within the top 1000 the easy way.
Click on the Top 1000 in Wordtracker and examine
the list.
We'll guess
at a single word and then instantly pinpoint it (if it is in the
top 1000)
Note: You
won't appreciate any of this unless you follow along
Okay, you are
on the page displaying the top 1000 list in Wordtracker, right?
Step one:
Press Control key plus the letter F on your keyboard.
Up pops the
FIND requestor.
Step two: Enter
any single word that you feel relates to your site.
For a real
estate example, I enter the word "house" and press
enter.
RESULT: My
cursor jumps to position 163 from the top 1000. The phrase I
pinpointed in just 2 seconds was "house plans".
What phrase
did you find in your example. If there was none found, you may
want to try entering different single words until you find
something popping up.
NEXT: I
ask myself if the phrase "House plans" relates
to the topic of Real Estate.
It might, so
to carry through, I highlight the phrase and copy, cut and paste
it into the comprehensive search function of Wordtracker and
press enter.
Then
immediately scroll to the bottom the results and click on the
link which says "Click here to perform a competition
search"
Finally
choose which engine you wish to examine, I enter Google and
click the proceed button.
RESULTS
(I'm limiting it to just the top 10)
| No. |
Keyword |
KEI
Analysis |
Count |
24Hrs |
Competing |
| 1 |
"Unique House
Plans" |
5697.252 |
877 |
328 |
135 |
| 2 |
"Free House
Floor Plans" |
3675.000 |
105 |
39 |
3 |
| 3 |
"Unique House
Floor Plans" |
3600.000 |
60 |
22 |
1 |
| 4 |
"Ice Fishing
House Plans" |
3344.143 |
153 |
57 |
7 |
| 5 |
"Free Play
House Plans" |
2809.000 |
53 |
20 |
1 |
| 6 |
"House Plans
For Log Homes" |
2756.250 |
105 |
39 |
4 |
| 7 |
"Donald A
Gardner House Plans" |
2704.000 |
52 |
19 |
1 |
| 8 |
"Free Green
House Plans" |
2380.500 |
69 |
26 |
2 |
| 9 |
"Free Dog
House Plans" |
1927.529 |
256 |
96 |
34 |
| 10 |
"house
plans" |
1244.977 |
16811 |
6290 |
227000 |
What does this mean?
A KEI (Keyword
Effectiveness Index) value of 100 is considered GOOD
A KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) value of 400 is considered
EXCELLENT
In general, the higher the KEI value the better.
In the above
example, if you wanted to be aggressive you could go after
number 10 with a potential of 227000 competitors or you could go
after number 1 with only 135 competitors!
Number 1
phrase "Unique House Plans" could potentially pull in
328 visitors every 24 hours with only 135 other pages competing
for it. Remember we are only talking about the potential traffic
from Google. You could also repeat this process within some of
the other search engines to.
Did you enjoy
this exercise? I'll bet you came up with some pretty interesting
results?
If you
are new to
Wordtracker or if this seems too confusing, be sure to read this
article about Wordtracker.
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John
Alexander
About John Alexander
John has taught onsite search engine marketing sessions to
people from over 80 different countries, and he's worked as a
professional in the search engine industry for years. John
operates a Web site for professional search engine optimizers, Beyond-SEO.
John Alexander and Robin Nobles teamed up together in 2002 to
create the Ultimate SEO Mastery Workshop. For more information
about their live, personal, hands-on workshop, please visit Search
Engine Workshops.
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under a Creative Commons
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