could see how many times that keyword or phrase turned up. It was a tedious and ineffective method
of keyword research. Today, keyword suggestion tools speed the competitive research process.Here’s how it works: first, you input your proposed keywords into a keyword suggestion tool, and
it examines a database that contains millions of instances of keyword usage. Using these tools, you
can quickly learn how many users are conducting daily searches for that term, how many of those
searches resulted in an actual visit, and what related search terms were used.Many keyword suggestion tools are available on the Web. Some of the top tools, which you’ll hear
about most often, include: Overture Keyword Selector Tool:Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool, shown in Figure 5-2,
shows you how many searches have been conducted over a given month for a keyword
or phrase related to the search term you entered into the Selector Tool. You can find the
Overture Keyword Selector Tool at this URL: http://inventory.overture.com/d/
searchinventory/suggestion/
Wordtracker:Wordtracker allows you to search for terms in the database of terms col-
lected. This program tells you how often a keyword or phrase was searched for and how
many competing sites use the keywords. In addition, like Overture, the list of keywords
and phrases returned may include words or phrases that you haven’t considered using.
Additionally, Wordtracker offers a top 1,000 report that lists the most frequently searched-
for terms and a Competition Search option that helps you determine the competitiveness
of each phrase. This report is useful for figuring out how difficult it will be to reach a spe-
cific rank for any given term. You may also find keywords on this list that have low com-
petition rates, but high relevancy. For example, Figure 5-3 shows some of the results for a
Wordtracker search for the term “business technology writer.” As you can see in the figure,
the term “writing business plan emerging technology” has very little competition. Therefore,
if you have a site that includes information about writing business plans for emerging tech-
nology business, this keyphrase might be a good choice because there is little competition,
but it can be a highly effective phrase. A free version of Wordtracker is available at http://
freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. Trellian Keyword Discovery Tool:The Trellian tool is a subscription tool (about $50 per
month) that allows users to ascertain the market share value for a given search term, see
how many users search for it daily, identify common spellings and misspellings, and dis-
cover which terms are impacted by seasonal trends. Figure 5-4 shows the some of the
results that are returned with a Tellian search for “Sydney Hotel.” As you can see in the fig-
ure, each keyword or phrase returned includes information about the number of searches
for the word in addition to having capability to analyze each word or phrase further.82
Part II SEO Strategies
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