Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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By the way, here’s a tip that can save you a bunch of time: YSM data is available

within the Wordtracker tool too. Last we looked, Wordtracker was still calling YSM’s

data the Overture database (Overture was bought by Yahoo!), so be on the lookout for

changes in labels here.

No keyword research tool is perfect, and you should always double-check

the data you get with your gut instincts. We use Wordtracker for most of our keyword

data gathering. We use YSM primarily to find related terms, to double-check trends in

popularity that we find with Wordtracker, and to plan PPC campaigns. Your finances

and preferences will dictate whether you use one or both.

Thursday: Keyword Data Gathering

Congratulations—you’re over the hump in your first week of SEO! You have a long list

of possible keywords and tools in hand to help you analyze them. Today you will fill in

those all-important columns on your Keywords Worksheet:

Search Popularity

How many people are actually searching for a given term

Relevance

How well a keyword connects with your site and conversion goals

Competition

How many, and how well, other sites are targeting a given keyword

Finalizing your top target keywords will require a balancing act between all

three of these factors. We’ll look a little more closely at each of them here.

Search Popularity

Both YSM and Wordtracker provide values for keyword popularity (see Figure 6.2 and

Figure 6.3). However, we recommend Wordtracker over YSM for two reasons: First,

Wordtracker pulls from a larger network of searchers. Second, as we mentioned in

your Wednesday task, Wordtracker is much more specific about word syntax. For

example, YSM may combine “IL” with “Illinois,” and you will never know which one

is actually more popular with searchers. Wordtracker gives you the option of looking

at the specific differences in terminology that you need to know in order to choose the

“just right” keywords.

It can be time consuming pulling up the search popularity values for every term

on your long list, but you can save time by copying and pasting several words at a

time—or your whole list—into the search popularity tool. If you’re good with Excel,

Now:

Switch to the Yahoo! Search Marketing (aka Overture) database within Wordtracker, or go to the

Yahoo! Search Marketing site, and test-drive it with some of your favorite keywords.

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