Are you optimizing your site for the right set of keywords?
As the author of your blog, you may have a clear picture in your mind as to which keywords are relevant for your site but it is always nice to have a tool that you can use to confirm the accuracy of that picture.
Website Keyword Suggestions
While there are plenty of tools available for you to use, one that I have found to be particularly informative and fun to use is the Website Keyword Suggestions tool over at WebConfs.com.
This tool is built using Overture’s keyword database and will attempt to determine the theme of your website in order to provide keyword suggestions. In addition, the tool will also display an estimate of the monthly traffic for each of those keywords.
Simply enter the URL of your blog and the tool will return a lengthy list of suggested keywords based on an analysis of your site. Couple the use of a tool like this with the analysis of something like HitTail and you will have a clearer picture about the keywords to use on your site.
Aim Lower For More Traffic
As you review the list of keywords that are returned for your own site, don’t just focus on the handful of results at the top of the list. While it is certainly appealing when you see the number of searches being performed for these keywords each month, you will be competing with many more people for that volume of traffic.
Consider the top six results returned for this blog:
Given the number of searches that are performed each month for these terms, I would love to rank highly in the search engines and be on the receiving end of that traffic. Unfortunately those keywords are very popular and there are likely some very big players at the top of the search engine results.
While that doesn’t mean you should ignore these popular keywords, you may find that you can receive a considerable amount of traffic by focusing on keywords that are lower down on the list.
Consider the following six keywords that were returned much lower on the list:
While the overall theme of these keywords is quite similar to the results at the top of the list, there is most likely much less competition in the search results for these keywords and that will increase the chances of ranking at the top of the list.
It might not be quite as flashy as ranking for the top keywords but I am sure that if you analyze your current statistics you will see that a good deal of your traffic currently comes from the long tail. Take advantage of this information and you may very well see the number of visitors to your site increase dramatically.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting tool there Derek.
humor was top on my list with 192,688 results.
According to the tool anything to do with humor and blogger would work well for my blog. lol
Bathroom humor has 444 searches and my blog ranks on the 2nd page.
You provide ways to make money and I’ll share the humor. 🙂
I just evaluated my husband website which is mostly on SEO and that tool was way off. His top keywords were publishing and book publishing. Like hu? Not even close. lol It even had child abuse and poetry in there. ROFL.
That is odd. Hopefully others will share their experience with regard to their site and the relative accuracy of the tool.
Don’t forget that it could be a difference between what you think his site is about and how this tool interprets the content. I know there have been times where I thought I was portraying one message but everyone that read the material thought something completely different.
But it is quite possible the tool is just plain out wrong. 🙂
Great tool, I must admit that I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around the whole Keyword thing, but it’s starting to make more sense!
To be honest, I’ve never really concerned myself with keywords and rankings and all that.
The way that I have approached it thus far is pretty much to just have fun and let the chips fall where they may. But I am trying to get better about things like this in order to continue expanding my reach.
Honestly, that’s how I look at it too, I just do my best and, if I rank high, then great!
His site is invision-graphics.com? lol I know what content is on there and poetry is not apart of it.
Overture (and this tool since it’s built off overture results) can be great! However, you need to take any results they give you with a grain of salt, as they can be wildly inaccurate at times, or spot on.
It’s a good indicator, just don’t take it as infallible.
Absolutely, thanks for the reminder Dave!
i use a lot of keyword tools and consider the results from all the resources. another one i check is http://keyword.secretstohighprofit.com/ which also gives the KEI but it’s old data — from jan 07. you should still be able to pull up the data even if the captcha doesn’t work, just enter anything and it should kick back the result. which proves to me that sometimes captchas are junk and meaningless 🙂
Makes a lot of sense. People will not type in too many words when hunting for a keyword and the trick is to get the combination right.
Its really a interesting tool,it help for seo. keyword is important in seo, thanks for sharing.
Third party keyword suggestion tools are a great start, but the most reliable keyword research is derived from “real” traffic and “actual” keywords that trigger specific actions on your own website.
To find that data, you really need to harness the metrics from your own, unique and “private” server logs, rather than third party tools.
Cheers!
Ken
Hey Derek,
I have seen some seo guys recently that place a huge amount of value on keywords that are trending in Google Insights and Trends, but have low competing pages. It seems pretty legit and something to check out.
Jared
{ 1 trackback }