Mommy, Where do Keywords Come From?Category: Add new tag, All news, Blog, SEO Tips, keyword research, keywords, seo | |
23 05 2009 |
It seems to come up with almost every child - the somewhat awkward yet vitally important question that every parent knows will one day be voiced. Although we aren’t in the business of educating youngsters about the origins of babies, we are in the business of helping SEO youngsters understand where keywords come from.
Let’s imagine we have just created a website where we want to promote web hosting companies as an affiliate. The site is designed just how we like it, and now we’re ready to begin driving some serious traffic. Although there are many different steps and processes involved in SEO success, the foundation is in the keywords. We need targeted traffic that is relevant to the products, services, or information on our site, so we need to choose keywords wisely.
Understanding this process and how we as “SEO storks” deliver the right keywords is an essential part of the optimization process. SEO for Firefox, a free Firefox add-on from SEOBook, provides the stork services we need. Through this tool we will be connected with the needed resources to truly know where quality keywords come from. Let’s use the example of our hosting site to understand the path of the SEO stork.
Go to the Firefox add-on page, download SEO for Firefox, restart your browser, and activate the add-on. Once the add-on is active, search for “web hosting” in Google, and you’ll see something like this:
Notice the links below the search bar. We will take a look at the most significant of these. As we understand each resource, our SEO stork will advance in his journey of delivering the proper keyword focus. Each resource will provide us with a new perspective, change of opinion, or new idea relating to keywords. In other words, watch and learn from the stork…
KW Research – This link takes you to SEOTools and gives a breakdown of daily search estimates for Google, Yahoo, and MSN on our keyword of choice and very similar keywords. From this tool, I can get estimates on each search engine for my keyword of choice, plus other closely related keywords. I see that “web hosting” is by far the most searched for term. The fact that my site doesn’t directly provide web hosting services might influence me to steer away from that phrase and consider different options listed below. …SEO stork arrives for pickup…
AW Sandbox - This link takes me to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Since we’ve decided to go against “web hosting,” we need new ideas. In order to get a better idea of what to focus on, I will choose 3 or 4 broadly related keyword phrases such as “compare web hosting”, “web hosting reviews”, and “rate web hosting.” These words would be more relevant to my site if I plan on marketing for hosting companies. I enter these phrases and the tool reports on exact and related terms. From this simple report, I can compare traffic on a broad range of keywords. At this point, we can discover that “compare web hosting” and “web hosting reviews” are relevant to our site and receive plenty of traffic. …SEO Stork takes flight…
Traffic Estimator- This tool shows me useful information on costs related to PPC campaigns. Once you’ve settled on a keyword phrase, this tool will give you great estimates on how much you should expect to spend on a PPC campaign surrounding that keyword. In this case, I could expect to spend $140 a day using “compare web hosting” as a primary phrase. …SEO Stork is cruising on course…
Trends – If nothing else, Google Trends helps you decide what to avoid. If we are trying to decide between two phrases, this tool will indicate the trends in search traffic. As shown below, the term “cheap web hosting” is on a decline whereas “business web hosting” seems to be more stable. …SEO Stork avoids a deadly collision with an airplane…
Insights-Here we can focus on quantities of searches relating to geographic locations, and potential alternatives with rising trends. Insights also displays other suggestions of possible keywords. If everything looks good up this point, we are well on our way to landing a great keyword phrase. …SEO stork comes in for landing…
Our flight is near completion. The remaining resources under the Google search bar are Sktool, Sponsored Results, 100, and CSV. Sktool is very similar to the Traffic Estimator, providing information on potential PPC campaign costs. Sponsored Results simply shows the sponsored results of the search. 100 shows the top 100 results rather than the default. CSV creates a comma separated value document with your results. Although all of these tools are helpful for other purposes, they do not provide the insight that the other tools give relating to keyword research.
As the SEO stork lands, let’s consider what we’ve learned. As we use each tool, we gain additional insight and information that helps us target proper keywords. And perhaps the most important thing to glean is we should base our keyword decisions on current search traffic, relevant information, and past statistics rather than guesswork. …SEO stork has safely delivered our keywords.
And that is where keywords come from.
You must be logged in to post a comment.