Chosing keywords without KEI?

Hi,

Having read that Wordtracker does not necessarily produce accurate figures I still decided to use it as a comparative tool between keywords rather than to see overall searches.
However, even though I had spent hours forming a keyword list by analysing my client´s brand, their customers and what they would search on, competitor´s keywords etc.. and had a list of about 500, Wordtracker didnt have any results on any but two of them i.e. it told me that there is no traffic on about 96% of my 500 keyword phrases..
Now I know this would suggest to someone that all the keyword phrases I came up with were wrong and no-one would search on them, but I find this extremely hard to believe as they included very obvious terms that represent how a customer would search and also keywords used by top performing sites.

Has anyone got any ideas how I can best go about determining what keyword phrases would be best to use out of my list without using Wordtracker and finding out the real KEI?

Or do you have any suggestions on how else to get traffic data other than with Wordtracker?

I am losing sleep over this at the moment, so will seriously appreciate any help.

Thanks a lot

Tania

 

Tania, I understand and sympathize - I am going through this very thing myself. I am also losing sleep since I have optimized for words which seem to have a lousy KEI, and already submitted a ton of links on that basis. Some on this forum have no faith in KEI as a measure, however. See: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=50621. These folks suggest using a pure google search and analyzing the top 10 sits returned - their page rank in particular. I extrapolated what dcristo was saying and did a source-view on many of those sites, to see what, if any keywords they seemed to be optimizing for.

Going with your dilemma, two things come to mind - if wordtracker is truly returning low search results, and that is your concern, have you thought of going to more generic terms, in other words, grabbing a larger swath of searchers by a more general term, and then doing KEI on that?

The other thing I wonder - a low search rate may not always be a bad thing, if you are offering something where people are not combing for information but coming to buy - in other words, your site is truly loaded with low hanging fruit. Maybe you only get 50 uniques a day, or fewer, but the conversion rate is astronomical compared to a site where you optimized for large-search keywords, and might get a ton of searches, but little action. Just a thought. I am going through this now, with my two sites. Not that either is doing any great shakes, but on my one site, the first, I am starting to rank on all the SEs for some pretty powerful keywords - but people seem to be coming to the site for the ingenious pearls of wisdom I dispense (i.e., "nordic ski length recommendations"; "how to roast a duck breast") and not interested in clicking or buying. On my other site, much newer, and uniques which measure in single digits by the week, I have already made a sale - and would have made another, if the product was available.

My point is I wonder whether keyword optimization is always the zenith of what we should be doing. For those sites with a natural bent to grab very directed, and eager traffic, a large number of visitors may not be necessary.

Anyway, good luck. I feel for you.

 

Tania, I understand and sympathize - I am going through this very thing myself. I am also losing sleep since I have optimized for words which seem to have a lousy KEI, and already submitted a ton of links on that basis. Some on this forum have no faith in KEI as a measure, however. See: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=50621. These folks suggest using a pure google search and analyzing the top 10 sits returned - their page rank in particular. I extrapolated what dcristo was saying and did a source-view on many of those sites, to see what, if any keywords they seemed to be optimizing for.

Going with your dilemma, two things come to mind - if wordtracker is truly returning low search results, and that is your concern, have you thought of going to more generic terms, in other words, grabbing a larger swath of searchers by a more general term, and then doing KEI on that?

The other thing I wonder - a low search rate may not always be a bad thing, if you are offering something where people are not combing for information but coming to buy - in other words, your site is truly loaded with low hanging fruit. Maybe you only get 50 uniques a day, or fewer, but the conversion rate is astronomical compared to a site where you optimized for large-search keywords, and might get a ton of searches, but little action. Just a thought. I am going through this now, with my two sites. Not that either is doing any great shakes, but on my one site, the first, I am starting to rank on all the SEs for some pretty powerful keywords - but people seem to be coming to the site for the ingenious pearls of wisdom I dispense (i.e., "nordic ski length recommendations"; "how to roast a duck breast") and not interested in clicking or buying. On my other site, much newer, and uniques which measure in single digits by the week, I have already made a sale - and would have made another, if the product was available.

My point is I wonder whether keyword optimization is always the zenith of what we should be doing. For those sites with a natural bent to grab very directed, and eager traffic, a large number of visitors may not be necessary.

Anyway, good luck. I feel for you.

 

use the keyword suggestion tool right here on digitalpoint. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools