9 replies to this topic

[RisaBB]

Hello,

My 1 month subscription to Keyword Discovery is running out tomorrow and in the last few days, I've probably spent 10 hours researching any idea that pops into my head, as well as keywords for my own site, my brother's website, and client's sites (just out of curiousity).

I read Dan's keyword thread, and I've seen his spreadsheets.

I read a thread on another forum where a woman has a dozen high ranking informational sites making good $ from Adsense and the biggest factor in her keyword research was her gut feeling of what were good keyword phrases. She doesn't check incoming links of her competitors because she doesn't want to be dissuaded.

Am I being too simplistic (maybe because I'm not accountable to a client for the keyword research I'm doing) by looking at Keyword Discovery's results and then doing a Google allintitle:"search phrase" search to determine if a keyword phrase is a good one, and that's it?

I was excited to see that a keyword phrase I looked up had 42,470 searches in Keyword Discovery and the allintitle search had 99 results. In another search, KD showed that the phrase had 19,200 searches and allintitle had 0 results (could that be?)

Is more research necessary for these terms? My gut feeling tells me that these terms are 100% relevant, so I'd say they were good terms to optimize for.

I guess I'd like to know what columns are in other people's keyword analysis spreadsheets? Is an allintitle:"search phrase" the absolute minimum? What should be in my spreadsheet for "just for fun" research and what should definately be in it for clients?

Thanks.

Risa

Edited by RisaBB, 03 February 2006 - 02:08 PM.

[Jill]

My gut feeling tells me that these terms are 100% relevant,

To me, that's the main thing. If it gets searches and is 100% relevant, then although the competition is interesting to note, I really don't care too much about it.

Afterall, you have just as much chance at getting there as the others do.

That said, it does sound like your allintitle: searches are giving you some good info, assuming that it's working correctly at Google. (Sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't.) I think Dan had a few other tricks you can try too in his pinned thread, which you may want to double-check.

[davidfromraleigh]

Instead of allintitle try...

intitle:"1stkeyword" intitle:"2ndkeyword" intitle:"3rdkeyword" rather than using the allintitle feature. In other words, you would break a 3 keyword phrase apart as mentioned here rather than do an allintitle together. You can do the inanchor the same way.

It seems to give more accurate information.

I hope that helps a little in your research.

David

[RisaBB]

David,

What's the difference between that and intitle:"keyword phrase?"

Does it mean that the 3 keywords can appear in any order in the title?

Thanks.

Rsia

[Jill]

As far as I can tell intitle and allintitle are the same command.

[davidfromraleigh]

Does it mean that the 3 keywords can appear in any order in the title?

Risa,

Good question....

The allintitle shows results based on the order that you typed them in. The intitle will show all the titles that have the words in any order.

David

[Jill]

I don't think that's correct, David. At least that's not what I'm seeing when I compare the two results.

In fact, it appears that if you use quotes in both commands, the results look pretty much the same to me (at a quick glance). Without quotes they seem different, but I'm not quite sure what the difference is yet, but it doesn't appear to be what you said. Not with the phrase I checked (which was search engine optimization).

[davidfromraleigh]

Jill, I thought about checking search engine optimization but I didn't.

I did however do this allintitle:"Real Estate Raleigh"

intitle:"Real" intitle:"Estate" intitle:"Raleigh"

I did the same with "Car Insurance." Allintitle and intitle.

I get different numbers on these two searches.

By the way, I just picked this up recently from DAN in his coaching program. I may be confused about what he was saying, but he said that he likes the intitle feature better than the allintitle so I've been trying it myself.

David

[davidfromraleigh]

I meant trying SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION originally berfore you posted not because you tried it. Again, I use to use the allintitle until DAN said he like the intitle way better.

David

[DanThies]

The intitle operator is what we use, because it can be combined with other operators like inanchor. Allintitle and allinanchor can't be combined with other operators.

Risa, I work with the search term, the count, and the relevance, to come up with a weighted popularity for the search term. That's all on the first worksheet in our keyword report workbook. This tells us which search terms are likely to give us the most exposure with people who are looking for what we have to offer. It also gives you a good idea of what people are looking for, period.

The competition metrics are interesting in terms of tactics and getting an idea of the level of effort required for SEO, but I don't think that this data should affect keyword selection. If your primary business is selling auto/car insurance, that's what your home page is going to be about, regardless of the competition.