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WordTracker Essential Tool
Use
Wordtracker
to Maximize Traffic
An Ingenious
Way to Use Wordtracker that's actually easier too!
by Robin Nobles
If you’re in the search engine industry, or if
you’re a Web designer or Webmaster, it’s an
almost sure thing that you’ve heard of, and probably
used, Wordtracker.
But, for those who may not know about Wordtracker, let’s
back up for a minute.
What exactly is Wordtracker, and why is it so important?
Most search engine optimizers would agree that one of
the most important things you can do for your Web site
is to target the right keywords. If you target the wrong
keywords, you may get scores of traffic but no conversions
to sales, or no traffic whatsoever. Either is disastrous
for an online business.
Before Wordtracker, it was up to the search engine marketer,
or the client, to choose theright keywords for the site.
We also had GoTo’s Search Term Suggestion Tool,
which was one of our only sources for keyword help at
that time.
Then Wordtracker entered the picture. With Wordtracker,
you can plug in some keywords,and the Web-based service
will give you ideas for additional keywords that might
work for your business. Not only that, but the service
will also tell you how competitive those keywords are
(how many other Web pages have been optimized with those
keywords in mind) and how many people have actually
searched for those keywords in the past 24 hours at
each of the major engines.
Ideally, your goal is to choose a keyword phrase that
doesn’t have a huge amount ofcompetition but that
(hopefully) a large number of people are searching for.
This is where the KEI comes in. KEI, which stands for
Keyword Effectiveness Index, refers to the number of
times a keyword has appeared in Wordtracker’s data
compared with the number of competing Web pages, which
points to which keywords would be most effective for
your search engine marketing campaign.
In other words, the higher the KEI, the more popular
your keyword phrases are, and the lesscompetition they
have. According to Wordtracker, a “good” keyword
to target is one that has a KEI of around 100, but an
“excellent” keyword to target has a KEI of
over 400. Okay, enough of the background into Wordtracker.
Most of you probably already know all of that. In fact,
your path through Wordtracker most likely looks very
similar to mine. The “old” way to use Wordtracker
In the past, I have always started at Keyword Universe,
or maybe at Keyword Projects. From there, I work my
way through the system. Does it work? Yes, very effectively.
Is it time consuming? Yep.
But, let’s look at an easier, and even more effective,
way to use Wordtracker. And with thisalternate way,
you’re actually considering keyword phrases based
on your target audience.
Introducing John Alexander
To write this article, I interviewed John Alexander,
an authority of Wordtracker
who has spent countless hours working through each of
the features and developing his own unique strategy.
As means of introduction, John is a professional search
engine optimizer with Beyond-SEO and a trainer of onsite
search engine marketing workshops through Search Engine
Workshops.
Besides using Wordtracker to find keywords, John actually
uses the service to target an audience’s surfing
behavior. Once he determines the surfing behavior, he
can use that knowledge to target those who are most
likely to purchase his clients’ products or services.
Unlike most of us, John doesn’t get “stuck”
in Keyword Universe to where the system does all the
thinking for him. Instead, he begins at Comprehensive
Search (found under the Multiple Search heading).
He explains, “Where you’ll find most of your
‘revelations’ or ‘insights’ is in
the Comprehensive Search feature of Wordtracker. Try
entering one part of a search phrase and letting Comprehensive
Search figure out the best ‘full use’ of the
phrase.”
Let’s look at an example
John has a client who sells baby furniture and products
online, so he needed to find the target audience for
baby furniture. Putting his creative mind at work, he
started thinking about who would want to buy baby beds
and strollers. Not people with newborns – after
all,
they already own all of the furniture they need. The
true audience for his client is soon to become parents,
grandparents, etc.
His next step was to use Comprehensive Search to try
to determine what his target audience is looking for.
John typed in “baby,” and he found some very
interesting results. People searching for the word “baby”
were searching for keyword phrases like “baby names,”
“Baby Names,” “Baby Boy Names,”
and so forth.
Bingo! He had the angle he needed to get traffic to
the site. Rather than concentrating on the actual product
he was trying to sell, he thought of a way to pull in
traffic through a different window. After all, what
will his target audience be looking for on the Internet?
Ideas
for names for their new babies!
John adds, “Keep in mind that this angle is also
based on the fact that babies are always on the way,
around the world, day after day, which creates an extremely
unique market for certain products. Understand the advantages
of identifying people’s behavior, and you'll never
look at keyword research quite the same.”
After he has captured the visitors at his site, he can
easily slide in the fact that the site is also selling
baby products and furniture. He’s gotten them to
the site, which is step #1; they are his target audience,
which is step #2; and with compelling content, he can
increase the site’s conversion rate to go along
with the increase in traffic.
How did John proceed? He created a page that focused
on the meanings of baby names. Keep in mind that the
page he created has value and unique content. He didn’t
just toss together a page, simply for the sake of getting
a top ranking. Instead, he worked hard to find
links all over the Web to sites that offer the meaning
of baby names. His page offers tremendous value to the
search engine and users as a one-stop resource for finding
links to the meanings of baby names. Then, in strategically
placed spots on the page, he subtly added pictures of
his client’s products with links to related pages.
John explains, “Don’t ever trick your audience
or they will simply never buy. Give them exactly what
they are looking for right up front. In this example,
I created a page that offers baby names and the meanings
of baby names, and I subtly offered a few product listings
or links to my client’s storefront. It is essential
that you always provide content related to their search
first, and then offer links to appropriate products
within your client’s site.”
The bottom line?
How did John’s strategy work out for his client?
The baby names page alone pulls in an additional 500
unique visitors of extremely targeted traffic each month.
John adds, “I cannot give you the percentage in
terms of the exact increase in sales, but I can tell
you that the client has been very pleased with the results.”
Remember that this is just one page that John added
to the site.
He explains, “Had I really wanted to pull out all
the stops, I could have created several entry pages
around this one theme. For example, targeting keyword
phrases such as: ‘most popular baby names,’
etc. You could also build the content right into the
site and extend it through all of the races:
Spanish baby names
Italian baby names
Jewish baby name
French baby names”
Now, let’s look at a “new” way to use
Wordtracker, John’s step-by-step approach: To write
this article, I came up with a real-life example and
I started at step #1, just like you will do with your
own site.
Let’s say that your client sells aromatherapy supplies
over the Internet. Your first step is to try to determine
the target audience. Who would be buying aromatherapy
supplies? One target audience would be people with stress
in their lives who want to use aromatherapy as a way
of relaxing. So, let’s try that angle and see what
we come up with. Go to Comprehensive Search at Wordtracker
and type in “relaxation.” Click Proceed. Scroll
toward the bottom of the page and click on “Check
boxes off.”
Scroll back to the top, and look at the various choices.
Remember that the “Predict” column is the
predicted traffic you could expect to get for each of
those keyword choicesfrom all of the major engines and
directories in one day.
Begin marking keyword ideas, all the while thinking
of a strategy to pull in traffic for yourclient’s
site through the target audience.
Scroll back to the bottom of the page and click on “Option
2: Competitive Search.” Choose MSN and Google,
since those two engines have the potential of bringing
in a lot of traffic to most Web sites. Of course, you
can choose any two engines or directories thatyou’d
like. Click Proceed.
What did we find? “Relaxation” and associated
words were not good choices, because the KEI in comparison
to the projected traffic was too low. Targeting those
keywords just wouldn’t have been worth the effort
for such a low amount of traffic. Keep in mind that
this is a real-life example, so this is certainly something
that could happen to you whendoing this strategy yourself.
So, we went back to the drawing board and tried “aromatherapy.”
Again, not a goodexample.
Then, we tried “massage.” After all, aromatherapy
oils are used when giving massages, and people who are
interested in massages would be a perfect target audience
foraromatherapy supplies.
After studying the Wordtracker results for the MSN and
Google search engines for words that include “massage,”
we picked the third result, “Techniques of Massage,”
because it’s an excellent and appropriate angle
for our client. The #1 result in MSN has a KEI of 3696,
but it wouldn’t work with our client’s site.
You have to be sure to choose keyword phrases that are
appropriate for your particular client’s site.
At MSN, “Techniques of Massage” has a KEI
of 255. Within a 24-hour period, if your site was placed
well in the MSN engine, you could expect to get 90 visitors
from MSN alone. What is your competition? 1954.
“Techniques of Massage” in Google has a KEI
of 900, 165 potential visitors through Google alone
in a 24-hour period, and competition of only 555.
Remember that a “good” KEI is anything over
100, and an “excellent” KEI is anything over
400.
Let’s be honest here. You could manage a top 10
for this keyword phrase with your eyesclosed (and your
computer turned off).
So, for our aromatherapy client, we could create a page
on the various techniques of massage, including (of
course) her oils and aromatherapy products. We would
spend time on the page and give it true value to both
the engines and the target audience. And, we woul subtly
add graphics and link text that points to the client’s
products in various areas of thepage.
John gave another example
He says, “If you're selling ‘digital cameras,’
don't optimize for ‘digital cameras.’ Did
you know that everyone is searching for ‘Digital
Cameras Review’? Build a page offering reviews
of digital cameras, which has a KEI thatjust blew me
away.”
Another effective strategy: Top Reports
Besides Comprehensive Search, John also likes to look
at the top reports for high performance keywords or
topics that are related to his client.
John explains, “I’ll review the Long Term
Reports, which are the top 1000 keywords over the past
24 hours. Then, I cut and paste any topics related to
my client into Comprehensive Search to get streams of
currently ‘hot topics.’ I define a hot topic
as a popular topic in high demand, which may also have
listsof related keywords phrases also in high demand.”
What happens if you can't find a hot topic that relates
to your site in the top 1000? John answers, “Many
people do not know that Wordtracker offers extensive
top word reports beyond the database. All you have to
do is ask, and they'll sell you:
The Top 20,000 words $99
The Top 100,000 words $500
The Top 500,000 words $2000”
Additional suggestions
-
When John goes to Comprehensive Search, he doesn’t
put in a huge list of keyword phrases. He types
in one single word, then lets Comprehensive Search
do the rest. This allows him to come up with ideas
and angles that he would have never considered before.
-
Like John, spend a lot of time thinking of your
target audience. Who are you trying to sell the
products or services to? There may be several target
audiences, as in the case of our aromatherapy example.
If so, go after keyword choices to target each of
those audiences.
-
Don’t be afraid to let your creativity take
hold. If your first few choices don’t work,
continue trying. Using Comprehensive Search, it
doesn’t take long to go back through the system
with a different keyword idea. Keep going back until
you find a possibility that might work for your
site or the site of a client.
-
Be sure to give the surfer what they’re looking
for when they choose your site from the search results.
If you promised them “techniques of massage,”
then be sure to give them good, solid content in
that area, including related links. Weave your products
and services throughout the page as you can. But,
don’t ever try to trick a surfer.
-
If you get stuck and just can’t find a keyword
phrase with a high KEI and a low level of competition
that will work for you, take a slightly different
approach. Instead of trying to bring in a large
amount of traffic through one single window, try
creating several windows and bring in a little traffic
through each one. Though more time consuming, this
strategy can be equally effective in the long run.
-
If you aren’t already a member
of Wordtracker, sign up for the free trial and
test the system out for yourself. Pricing is very
reasonable, depending on your needs. For example,
you can use the service for a week for $19.94, and
many other plans are available. The bottom line
is this: if you are serious about your Web site,
you’ve got to be serious about keyword choice.
If you’re serious about keyword choice, Wordtracker
is a “must have” service for you.
 Robin
Nobles is the Director of Training for the Academy of
Web Specialists, where she has taught several thousand
students in her online search engine marketing courses
during the past several years. She is also the content
provider for GRSeo (Search Engine Optimizer) software.
Her latest books, Web
Site Analysis and Reporting and Streetwise
Maximize Web Site Traffic, can be ordered through
Amazon. For onsite training by Robin Nobles and John
Alexander, visit Search Engine Workshops.
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