« KEI Observation Deck - Examples of "examples." | Main | Syndicate this column to your Web site? »
August 13, 2005
Wordtracker Q & A with John Alexander
Saturday August 13, 2005 - Wordtracker Q & A
Today on the KEI Observation Deck, I wanted to answer a few recent questions concerning Wordtracker.
Question:
[Jim R.] Hi John. On the one of the terms you've chosen to use in Wordtracker post the other day, I have a comment.
The term was "band instrument mouthpiece."
No one would EVER search for "band instrument mouthpiece." There is no such instrument as a "band instrument" instead, they would quite rightfully, use their band instrument to search for a mouthpiece....
a la - saxophone mouthpiece, oboe mouthpiece, clarinet mouthpiece.
-------------------
Answer:
[John Alexander] First of all, thank you for your comments. I should point out that the keyword phrases that I post in the KEI Observation Deck here are simply "observations."
I like to demonstrate to people that you can go into Wordtracker and find high KEI values for phrases that are in fair to high usage but low competition. Many people do not understand that there is a simple way to go into Wordtracker and extract huge KEI phrases within just minutes. I am not trying to do the research for people, but just encourage them of the tremendous potential that exists in this tool and explain that it can be extracted quickly. This is the basis for the technique I teach called Wordtracker Magic.
[John Alexander continued] Obviously there are logical lower KEI phrases that Wordtracker lists that are more competitive and you can certainly optimize for them too if you wish to compete.
But in many many cases, with a little lateral thinking, you can open up the scope of "behavioral research" and this can pay off tremendously. The key is in understanding that there are many different "audiences of searchers" all searching the Internet with "different interests" but also different "levels of experience" in search. Remember this aspect of "experience level" because I'll come back to it.
You are quite right that you have the people who will tune right in for a specific search based on what they are shopping for (as you suggested.) But then you have many others who are indeed musicians and they may not pull out their credit card and be shopping for a new mouthpeice but perhaps they're using the Internet as a tool to research something of interest to musicians.
[John Alexander continued] Jim, when you say that: "nobody would EVER search for "band instrument mouthpiece."
Are you taking into consideration a parent who is brand new to searching online (maybe online less than a month) and is perhaps using a search engine for the first few times?
Think about it for a minute?
Perhaps Mom is searching for an instrument mouthpiece for her son who plays in the band. Now I'm not saying this is a great phrase, but we can never lose by trying to understand how people think and we need to understand that everyone uses the Internet at different "flexibility and experience" levels based usually on their own personal experience with searching online.
Your suggestion for a phrase like "saxophone mouthpiece" is what I'd consider using too, if I was focusing on attracting the "experienced searchers" to whom I wanted to sell a saxophone mouthpiece.
But what if you were creating a muscians portal or informational site? What if you were creating a Web site loaded with high quality, useful topics of specific fascination to let's say jazz musicians.
Do we know the audience there? Do we know the content that they are frustrated when they can't find? Jazz musicians love talking to other jazz musicians. Jazz musicians love their instruments. They love jazz music and jazz history. It's a different topic, but all I really encourage people to do with Wordtracker, is to use it for more than the obvious keyword terms that FIRST come to mind.
The reason to explore beyond is because whether or not we realize it we usually have "multiple" audiences that we could be attracting to our Web site.
Use Wordtracker for researching behaviors.
Here is my free audio tips explaining it.
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/audiomagic.html
[John Alexander continued] Wordtracker is a tool for exploring high intrest topics and niche topics that can be most telling. Wordtracker is like your "window on the world" of search behavior. There are mutiple audiences out there and multiple ways to reach those audiences. But keep in mind that if we are going to reach those audiences, we must start thinking beyond the limited scope of our own experiences in views. I hope that make sense. Stop researching keywords for a little while and begin to explore the world of behaviors.
Question:
[Jim R.] In my mind, the HIGH KEI index that such a search returns using an unreal search term
is totally without merit....
[John Alexander] I agree that the challenge is "in our mind" but our focus needs to be on the searcher behavior. The single biggest challenge to getting the most out of Wordtracker is the fact that our brain is already pre-programmed with phrases that "make sense to us." So we can end up really narrowing our scope of view.
My goal here is not to reveal the best phrases in the KEI observation deck, my goal is to encourage people to give things a second look and to realize that there are awesome trails of gold if they want to find them.
I'm not doing the research for you here, but I'll give you advice and encouragement. I get very nice compliments and thank you letters from our students who like to share their stories as they expand their lateral thinking.
If you are happy with the methods you are using and getting lots of traffic, that's wonderful. Keep right on doing it and you'll do fine. Remember, that KEI is not perfect, it's just a mathematics equation. But it's much more powerful than most people think. I go into Wordtracker exploring human interests every day and I always discover something fascinating that I never knew before.
For years, Wordtracker was my best kept secret and until I became an SEO educator. Back then I never used to tell anyone about it. But I have these insights to thank for my early client's success as well as my own success (and I believe for our students success too.) I think there are probably loads of people who could attribute their success to Wordtracker if the truth were known.
Jim, thanks for taking time to write to me. I do appreciate it and perhaps we'll see you someday in the future at the Ultra Advanced Symposium or something. We have one tentatively scheduled for Toronto on September 24 & 25.
Question:
[Alan T.] John, inside Wordtracker’s database they have over three hundred and fifty million (350,000,000) keyword queries. I have heard that there are other services touting similar data as Wordtracker, only they claim to have over Ten billion (10,000,000,000) keywords in their data.
As an expert in the business of behavioral research, would you not think it wise to have access to 10 billion keywords as opposed to Wordtracker’s 300 million in comparison?
Answer:
[John Alexander] Actually, quite the opposite is the truth. You need to be aware of the quality of the data being gathered into the database. Wordtracker is in my opinion, light years ahead of anything else around for this exact reason.
Do you believe this Myth? : Bigger is always better.
The myth of bigger is always better…..is simply untrue. "Quantity" simply does not and can not ever replace "quality."
Think about it. Just because you have billions of keywords does not mean you will find billions of niches. In fact what you will probably find, is a just a load of duplication. But there is something else to be aware of too.
Fact: Not all search result data is equal and you better be able to know the difference.
Did you know for example that some search engines and PPC engines have hard coded links directly connected into other sites? So if for example they have a search box or a large campaign connected with a gambling site for instance, the keywords arriving through the source, will be quite heavily skewed towards the gambling specific keyword terms and phrase clusters.
I'm not saying Wordtracker data is perfect, (nothing in this industry is ever perfect) but I am suggesting that if you want the best quality data, use Wordtracker.
Would you like to read more Wordtracker Questions and Answers?
Would you like to read a few more Wordtracker related articles?
Drop by again soon for some more high KEI example phrases which we will be posting here soon.
Wishing you the best of success in your online visibility!
Highest regards,
John Alexander
john@searchengineworkshops.com
Search Engine Workshops
Online SEO Training
Search Engine Academy
Posted by John at August 13, 2005 09:45 AM