For me personally, Wordtracker.com is not just a tool for looking up keywords. Sure, that's one good use for it, but what I want to distinguish is another influential and exciting use for Wordtracker as an SEO resource.
"Keywords" for use in your Meta tags are probably the least influential element in search engine optimization these days. However, hunting for keywords still seems the most popular use for Wordtracker. After all, it contains over 336 million queries within its database, which is no older than 60 days. An SEO can spend long periods of time doing research and hunting for keywords. But let's really try and get our minds around the keyword hunting issue for a minute, and I'll explain a few other tips for using Wordtracker.
In the early days of web development, business owners had learned the very expensive lesson that a Web site with no visitors is of little value. Once the business owner learned that methods could be utilized to increase their visibility through search engine optimization, it then became apparent that the traffic that really benefited them, was "targeted traffic." It only made sense that if you were selling a solution, the person who will buy the solution are the ones experiencing a problem or challenge. It also became obvious that the best products and services to sell online were niche or specialized markets. Large volumes of "general visitors" (general volume traffic) may have looked nice on a statistics report but only the truly "targeted visitors" (target traffic) were usually the visitors making purchases or doing business at the Web site.
Long before the days of researching phrases with the helpful online resources of today, the art of keyword/phrase selection was often left just to guesswork. However, guesswork by today's highly competitive standards is just not good enough. So how is it possible to select a powerful traffic-pulling phrase in this fashion without researching it in real time? Better yet, is it possible to choose such a phrase and get positioned before it becomes popular?
Well of course it requires some research, but in a slightly different way. Every single day, we have a world of information that happens all around us. With all of the focus on the Internet these days, we need to also consider giving our attention to other medias as well. We have television programs, we have the news and the radio which all bring us current and upcoming events. With the news itself, there are often many ideas that can help the SEO to really think and plan ahead for some truly unique optimization strategies. I am talking about the potential of developing part of your client strategy around an upcoming newsworthy event. Of course it needs to be relevant and useful to the target audience. It also needs to genuinely "relate".
We all know the importance of gaining top visibility to a specific target audience on the major search engines. After all, you really need qualified traffic or those who are actually searching for goods and services that you are offering. While most of the time, we teach folks about the importance of doing good keyword research and/or behavioral research to ensure they are attracting an "ideal" target audience, there is another more natural aspect that I'd like to just touch on here.
Search engine optimizers often forget who our true audience really is. We get so wrapped up in trying to please the search engines that we forget to focus on our target audience: our users.
What we've got to do is forget about the search engines and concentrate totally on our customers. I call it . . .Optimization without optimization . . . focus on your target audience and forget the search engines!
In private consultations with some Search Engine Optimizers I am always amazed at how many people feel it's necessary to hype things up in order to sell their search engine placement services.
Selling hype or setting unrealistic expectations is one of the LEAST intelligent things you can do to build long term client relationships. Instead of scrambling to outdo the next self proclaimed SEO guy's claims, why not try something more in the nature of a soft sell.
I want to give you a few more things to think about as you excel and grow in the craft of search engine marketing. If you are anything like me, you were hooked the first time you really made a difference to someone else's success. I soon realized that being able to help business owners to get results from these optimization methods and strategies could also be amazingly profitable. I found out that customers are your greatest resources and many of them are quite generous when you make an impact on their business. So the topic here is for those who want to profit from their skills (if you are not already doing very well and having an awesome time already).
It may seem like a strange thing to talk about but before I begin, I'll say this. There are many folks out there offering various SEO services and they are still not getting the profits that they would like to make. They are not REALLY profiting the way they might if they took a little different approach. The solutions that business owners need to really make a difference in the bottom line, require more than just bringing volumes of traffic to a site. You need targeted traffic mixed with a web strategy to compel response.
Keyword density. When it comes to SEO copywriting, this has to be one of the most talked about subjects. Why? Because keywords are the very foundation of search engine copywriting. Without keywords we wouldn't even have SEO copywriting. Because keywords (or more accurately, keyphrases) play such an important role in search engine copywriting, it might make sense that there are certain rules and regulations - certain formulas - that should be followed. It might make sense, but, I'm sorry to say, the mystery. the magic. is more like a myth.
I have a guess as to where these magic formulas come from. Someone brags to their friend that they got #1 ranking for a particular keyphrase. The friend studiously looks over the site and starts taking notes. "He used this phrase eight times in a 500-word piece of copy. He put the keywords in here and there and over here, too. That means you have to put keyphrases in these places and reach a keyword density of 1.6% in order to get a #1 ranking." Not so! Let me explain why keyword density formulas don't fly.
One-way link building is a great way to improve your link popularity and ranking in the search engines. One-way links are more difficult to obtain than traditional reciprocal links, but pay off in securing solid long-term search engine ranking results.
One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization campaign is also one of the most overlooked - preparation!
As I'm always explaining to my SEO101 students, there are some important steps to take in advance of launching your campaign that will make sure it has a better chance at succeeding.