When it comes to Internet marketing, I always start every conversation with search engine optimization (SEO.)
Why? Because the search engines are where we all start. If you have a need, a problem or a question, Google or Yahoo are often your first stop. Your prospects are the same way.
However, if you’re selling "time pieces" and they’re looking for "watches," or you perform "rhinoplasty" and they need a "nose job," they’ll never find you. You need to make sure that you’re findable via the search engines. You need to know what your prospects are looking for.
There have been a number of online tools that help site owners uncover the most effective keywords to use on their Web site — we used WordTracker for years — but recently I’ve been playing around with Keyword Discovery by Trellian and I’ve been very impressed.
Keyword Discovery’s interface is simple and easy-to-use. You enter in a keyword you think your audience would use to find your services: "lobster," "bobble head doll", "boarding school," and KD brings back related terms with the number of times each phrase has been searched on.
Click on the "analyze" button and find out how many other sites "compete" for your phrase and what the KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Indicator is on a scale of 0 – 10. The higher the number, the more effective that phrase is.
Just because a search is popular, say "travel" or "ADD," doesn’t mean it will be effective for you. There may be too much competition from established sites for you to ever rank well for a specific keyphrase. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it, just that you should find other keyphrases that can drive qualified traffic to your site that don’t have as much competition. Keyword Tracker can help you uncover these diamonds in the rough.
The advanced search allows you to search for related terms, search a thesaurus, even to crawl pages that rank well for your keyphrases to see what other words they have in common. There are a number of other types of searches you can perform as well.
Like other keyword tools, you can save keywords to "projects" for later review.
Keyword Tracker costs $49.95 for a one-month subscription, or $390 for a year. There’s also a limited version that’s available for month’s trial.
KD also has some nice information about how to integrate your keyphrases into your Web pages, but if you’ve read my article "The Secret to Great Search Engine Rank," you’re all set.
If you’re serious about being found at the search engines you need to stop guessing at what your prospects are searching for and find out for sure. Try Keyword Tracker and uncover the keyphrases that could be driving qualified traffic to your site.
Tags: Search Engine Optimization | SEO | Search Engine Marketing | SEM | Keyword Discovery
