But still, the problem remains, how do you go about researching to find the right search terms/keywords...
inventory.overture.com seems to be a great resource for keyword research as far as volume of words searched. However I am sure that thegypsy may be able to shed more light on this subject. Also I don't think anyone touched on outbound links from your site. I read it here at DP in another thread. Making sure that you don't have to many outbound links from your site is important. I have a site that is ranked on the second page of google. (without a long explanation, I want it on page two due to my niche, anyway back to the point) I recently added a half of dozen more outbound links to the home page. Within 48 hours I dropped to page three of results. That went on for a week and a half or so. Then I read the post here at DP about outbound links. I took off several links and within 24 hours I was back to the second page and 3 or 4 spots higher then before. I am still learning SEO, but it is ever changing, but then again so is life. Just my two cents. MAtt
Well it's an inexact science to be sure.... There are those that use the KEI ( keyword effectiveness index) but it can be problematic depending what metric is used for the 'competition' figure. It can get skewed quickly.... Some use the CORE total results to a SERP ( 1 out of 120 000 etc...) or you can narrow it more in steps using -- quotations ("") allintitle allinurl This will give more clues as to what the competition is for a given term. You can also look at PPC costs on various KWs in your research as well. Some other thoughts in a post here; http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=187120 Methodology is important as well. The 'money terms' will generally take more time to conquer... so chasing some secondary terms simultaneously can't hurt. From money terms to the long tail terms... it's nice to have a collection. In the end, there is no teacher better than experience. After a bunch of years, working many different terms on different sites in varied markets.. one starts to get a feel for things.... Some fun tools are; http://www.spyfu.com/ http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty http://www.nichebot.com/ (paid but affordable with nice tool sets) I hope that helps some.... ask some questions in the KW boards -- http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=77 L8TR
the most important thing is SEO maybe external links with anchor text, your web page title, and domain name.
I have to agree that putting some time into the planning of how to best approach the search engine optimization is often overlooked. THanks for putting it out there
Thanks for the info! Overture doesn't seem to be that accurate from personal experience. For example, it says that the keyword "Nintendo Wii" gets 482,250/month. But i have got my website, wiiplus.net, to the first page of Google for that keyword yet i don't get no where near that much traffic.
Type in "websites" in Google. Hardly any of the websites in the top 10 results have the keyword "websites" in the domain name. I know this is just a small example of how the keyword in the domain name isn't really that important... but there are loads more example with the same results.
I think the "easiest" way is to work hard on an all-encompassing linkbait-worthy original article/series on the overall topic and let people link it with various keyword / variations (you have little control on it, anyway).
I am no professional, but I have done lots of experimentation, observation, and work with an SEO professional. My perspective is this: There are lots of ways to skin a cat. Some ways work better than others depending upon: a) your content b) target audience c) site objectives (traffic vs. repeat visitors as an example), d) targeted search engine e) revenue vs. visitor objectives, etc. Good SEO requires you to analyze "what you have to work with" and juxtaposes this on "what you desire". Every answer above has some of the ingredients to success. However, your site is unique, and therefore none of the answers applies. Only through planning, experimentation, analysis, and then iterating through this process over and over again, can you find the right set of ingredients for your specific site. John Chow experimented with one approach, and now he is back to the drawing board. Analysis - experimentation - analysis and back again. Good luck! Rich
Always consider your site's Title, Keywords and Description. All of these should be related with your domain and content. And never forget to get backlinks from relavant websites.