175 replies to this topic

[Randy]

I do look at the KEI as a very general indicator personally, but I don't really give it much thought beyond that.

Does it help you to identify some secondary and tertiary search phrases that you should be able to optimize for fairly easily? Potentially. The reasoning being that if there are less sites competing for a given phrase, chances are there are less people who are actually optimizing for the phrase. So if the phrase fits what my site does, you can bet that I'll optimize for a high KEI phrase.

On the other hand, just because a certain very relevant phrase may have a crappy KEI number doesn't mean I'm going to ignore it. Especially if the phrase has the potential to bring me some significant traffic.

As has been said around these parts before, if your goal is to achieve a Top 10 ranking for any phrase, as it should be, you really should have a mindset that you have only 10 competitors. No matter how you slice it, you'll have to move one of them out of the way to rank on the first page of the SERP's.

In the end it doesn't matter if Wordtracker says 2,000 or 2,000,000 sites contain a certain term. You still only have 10 competitors if your goal is to be Top 10.

[Ruud]

I like that mindset!


Ummm... If the KEI is a so-so indicator, what to you is the specific value, if any, of WordTracker itself?

Ruud

[qwerty]

It helps you brainstorm on keyword phrases you may not have thought of, and gives you a good estimate of how many people are searching on those phrases. That's pretty valuable.

But I agree that the KEI doesn't tell you much.

[DanThies]

KEI for the exact same search term will rise or fall depending on which search engine you choose to look at on Wordtracker. This is because it depends on the total number of results on a "phrase match" search, which will vary depending on the size of the search engine's database.

The number of folks who are competing with you doesn't change just because you look at different search engines. So, why should "keyword effectiveness" change?

The #1 thing I worry about is relevance - targeting the search terms your site *should* show up for.

[Randy]

Ummm... If the KEI is a so-so indicator, what to you is the specific value, if any, of WordTracker itself?

Ditto what Qwerty said. Wordtracker can be very helpful finding those secondary phrases that are very, very relevant and convert like gangbusters. I love those. I could care less if they only get 50 searches per month.

If I have targeted 50 low-traffic secondary phrases, and if I'm converting just one of every 50 of these incredibly pre-qualified visitors, I've just made 50 more sales each month for very, very little work.

That's why I refer to these low-traffic, but very relevant terms as "Money in the Bank" terms, much to my partner's amusement.

Disclaimer: The 1 in 50 conversions is used for demonstrations purposes only. Your results may vary. Mine is actually more like 1 in 20 for these highly relevant, little searched terms.

[Ruud]

*nod* Yeah, I agree. That is actually how I stumbled upon my main search phrase taking my basically personal site to the level of "uh, ok, let's watch the bandwidth here".

Doing the allintitle: search for my terms sure is an eye opener. I have a lot less real competition than I perceived.

Ruud

[projectphp]

Maybe I am the only one who thinks this way, but I reckon keyword research, cometition and targetting is all a bit of a waste of time.

Sure, you need to know some basics, e.g. Ayers Rock gets three times the search of Uluru, the rocks official, PC name, and colony countries don't call them "cell phones" but "mobile phones", but beyond that, I reckon a spray and pray approach is the best.

IMHO, if you have, say, 1,000 pages, you should cover a lot of keywords, and get significantly more traffic, than someone with ten, well ranked, keyword optimised pages.

Even better, the more pages you have, the less you suffer from Keep the Faith When the [url=http://searchengineland.com/070621-145956.php]Keep the Faith When the Algo Changes[/url], as longer searches which can only be acheived with lots of content, ( which are still significant) tend to be a lot more stable producers of traffic, as well as converting significantly better than more popular terms.

In terms of keyword competition, keyword research et al, once you have a basic set of preferences, the fatser you build unique, different content the better. That is partlt why Amazon, wiith reems of User reviews, are starting to do so well, and why forums always deliver lots and lots of traffic.

Just my

[Ruud]

True too. Traffic can come in on virtually anything. I guess it's more an issue for commercials sites that sell a specific product. If you sell spanking new blue widgets you could care less for a lot of "frugal living" searches.

To be honest, for me it's more the game itself. It's fun to find something you want to write about, find a nice thight keyword search for it, optimize it and watch traffic increase specifically targeted for that search. Others play Grand Theft Auto (does that still exist? is it popular? *shrug*) or Myst - I do this :-)

I don't think that many commercial sites have the time, money or manpower to get a 1000 page site up. Yes, you can get a lot of traffic that way but if it's not converting into sales - who would care? If you're into ads display, as I happen to be in a small way, *then* it is important to get traffic - any traffic :-)

"Spray and pray" - I like that phrase/expression!

Ruud

[projectphp]

I don't think that many commercial sites have the time, money or manpower to get a 1000 page site up. Yes, you can get a lot of traffic that way but if it's not converting into sales

Not true, but I get ya point. 1,000 pages do take a long time to write,but at 1 a week, you should get there eventually, especially ecommerce sites with over 100 products. They should easily have 4 or 5 times that many pages.

[peter_d]

IMHO, if you have, say, 1,000 pages, you should cover a lot of keywords, and get significantly more traffic, than someone with ten, well ranked, keyword optimised pages.

Spot on! Go wide.

have the time, money or manpower to get a 1000 page site up.

Can be done in five minutes. Takes others years. Depends on the mode of production.

[projectphp]

Depends on the mode of production.

Peter, are you spoiling for a fight?? It has been a while since I had the joy of watching you lock horns with anyone, and if that comment doesn't get someone going, well, SEO truly has grown up!!!!

[peter_d]

Hey projectphp, long time, no see

Peter, are you spoiling for a fight??

<laughs>Are you trying to set me up?

What you say is true.

Why cover ten terms when you can cover 1,000? Databases can profile queries, and respond accordingly. The user is happy. The search engine has relevant content. The time to market, and cost of production, is reduced. Win-win-win. You can, alternatively, write 1K pages by hand.

The later approach does not necessarily produce quality, while the former does not necessarily produce nonsense. But one approach has significant time and cost advantages. Depends on what you are trying to achieve.

[projectphp]

Good to see you to Peter.

What was I thinking, you are right, that can be done "Tastefully"

For every 10 products in an ecommerce catalogue, that is pretty much 1 additional page. After you add in pages by type, by author, by publisher, by manufacturer etc etc, you usually end up with significantly more pages than products. Write a quality CMS and, Voila, pretty good, detailed content that should rank well accross multiple terms.

<sigh>Pity, I like the fights.

[SmellieNellie]

Be gentle with me guys! I am new to all this and trying to learn - quickly!

My problem is that when trying to find keywords for businesses within intensely competitive markets such as IT, they all come up with a low KEI and also have 100s of 1000s of pages in competition. The only way that I could think to narrow this down, was to add the Areas that I work into the search. Which is all well and good, but I am then wondering whether that is what people who are searching for services such as those on offer, actually do.

In my defence, they are the sort of services that people would look to find locally due to the nature of the business, but what are your thoughts.

I know I have a problem in that I do not feature in UK pages, which I am in the middle of sorting out, but if I do whole of Web search putting in: database design wrexham then I rank #1 but I am relying on my target audience also putting in the town into their search.

Your feedback would be very welcome!

Thanks

SmellieNellie

[qwerty]

If you're right when you say that your services "are the sort of services that people would look to find locally due to the nature of the business" then it makes perfect sense to optimize for your location.

Are your server logs backing up that theory? That is, are you finding that you're getting traffic from people who made searches on database design wrexham?