I have just been doing a little research and for ages now i have seen such keywords as "michigan seo consultants" getting high rankings in keyword trackers for the most search daily terms of "seo" how and why is this? This particular keyword receives 1,132 daily searches? This number is taken from here: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php What i want to know is, is this true? and why is it? Thanks
Well, my common sense ability to reason would say there is a high demand in Michigan right now for SEO consultants. How valid the data actual is... well is another story all together.
It is rather strange though, that is something i have considered "ssandecki" whether the data is actually valid and accurate. This is something i believe i am going to experiment with and report back in a week or two.
no way this keyword is even getting 1300 searches per month, just use common sense and use the google adword estimator to have a true idea about the traffic volumes.
Common sense would obviously bring me to that conclusion however considering this is a well used keyword tool i believe i shall investigate further. I have no doubt that the tool is inaccurate in this case however i may aswell have a look.
I don't know why either, but various keyword tools have showed the Michigan SEO terms getting high search for a couple of years. I ranked high for a couple of them, and there was hardly any traffic. Even on Google Adwords tool it shows similar search volume as terms like SEO Company but i have ranked for that also and Michigan gets way less. Here's what i figured, some sites run a live table of their rankings. When the page is loaded, the script queries the terms and fetches the current rank and shows it to the user such as #2 "Michigan SEO". If that was running on a homepage getting 500 visits a day, it would certainly jack up the search volume.
I've seen this before and I also have thought it strange. Perhaps, someone in Michigan does multiple searches for "Michigan SEO" on a daily basis. Some people are obsessive about checking the rankings.
Hmm good idea, that would prove why these phrases seem to appear so highly. It has also started to happen with phrases with the "ny" on the end "Web development ny" for example obviously "ny" represents New York, so i am guessing this is because of the same thing that it happening to the "Michigan keywords" One thing i do not understand though with your idea, if that is the case would the same not be happening with search terms such as "seo"
It possibly does but it's not as noticeable because SEO isn't a strange term to be high on keyword lists but Michigan is. When i was #3 for "SEO" the traffic was definitely not what i would call brilliant, and a lot of it was indeed bots etc scraping the search results, harvesting emails to market to and other SEO's checking out who ranks. The conversion was really poor.
You also have to consider the number of searches done for the term by SEOs, designers, developers, in Michigan. This would inflate the true number of daily searches. Additionally keyword ranking reports will also add to the number of invalid searches done for the term. Probably the true daily search volume is 13................not 1300.
Very true, i have found that SEO related terms do not bring brilliant traffic, so i am trying to figure out a different angle to rank highly for so that my traffic will increase yet still be relevant to my content. Ranking 3rd for SEO must of taken you a while.
The best way is to start a blog and funnel in a stack of long tail traffic instead of trying to rank for a handful of SEO terms. Also this way if a couple of your terms drop to page 2 it wont negatively effect your traffic. It took about 3 months to rank front page for SEO from when i actively started targeting it, but the domain was about 8 months old.
Thats pretty good, yes i am targetting many long tail keywords, well trying to however they are harder to find than the short more obvious keywords. My plan is over summer to target more long tailed keywords so i do not have to rely heavily on the handful of seo terms. Do you have any advice for finding these long tail keywords?
Generally you dont find long tail search terms, they find you. Its just a matter of adding lots of unique niche related content then adding lots of links to that content. Have a look at my SERP Domination thread in this section, also take a look at www.hittail.com
It's this one, SERP Domination - 4,785 Page 1 Rankings in 14 Days! It explains quite a bit about long-tail traffic.