An Ingenious Way to Use Wordtracker . . . that's actually easier too! (Part 1)

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
(http://www.wordtracker.com).

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 the right 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 (http://www.wordtracker.com) 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 of competition 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 less competition 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 this alternate 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 (http://www.beyond-seo.com) and a
trainer of onsite search engine marketing workshops through
Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

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"

(See Part 2)