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March 16, 2008
Wordtracker Questions and Answers
Dear John,
"What do you mean when you talk about researching the target audience's "behavior?" Is that not what Web analytics software like Webtrends is for?"
J.Lawrence
Dear J.
Web analysis software generally tells you about the behavior of visitors within your Web site AFTER they have found you.
I am talking about the importance of researching your ideal target audiences behavior long before they ever find your Web site.
Wordtracker has tremendous potential to reveal clues as to what your target audience *really* wants or what they are looking for.
There are many more ways to assist your buying audiences, if you understand the circumstances that cause them to search in the fashion that they do. You won't always instantly tap into these type of expressions and phrases, but when you do it is most rewarding (especially if you have the solution for them.)
Best wishes,
John Alexander
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Question:
"I sometimes still have trouble finding keywords with higher KEI. Am I missing something or doing something wrong? Sometimes I find great values way over 400 or 500. Other times I am just not able to find much."
Jason R.
Dear Jason,
You are more than likely doing everything well but for some topics, you are going to need to change the way you are thinking.
Like anything else, you improve with practice. As you will discover not all "root words" render the same insights. Here are a few more tips:
- Try narrowing your phrase down to single root word or term.
- Try to avoid the most logical terms for root words and choose weaker supporting terms sometimes. Even terms that you feel might be useless will render surprising and interesting trails (sometimes very telling.) Most people don't ever see these because they tend to guess at words that make the most sense (based on their reasoning and/or recent experiences.)
- Try choosing an "action related" root term but leave out the subject to allow Wordtracker to fill in the most valuable part for you.
- Remember to test related synonyms of your root word. (Ideally those that are Semantically related through the full search function.)
- Purposely try checking for popular acronyms that are industry specific. Many searchers will type in sort of a lazy fashion like when speaking in a chat room.
Also in your question, you don't mention much about the compete value.
Keep a close eye on this because a fair to high number of searches for relevant phrase with low compete count is really all you need. In other words, don't become obsessed with high KEI. Watch those compete numbers too.
Best regards
John Alexander
PS: Remember that if you are a member of the SEO Workshop Resource Center, I will be doing a series of onscreen Webinars soon on the topics of Keyword Forensics at http://www.SEW-WRC.com
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QUESTION:
"John, I don't understand why Wordtracker returns upper and lower case sensitive phrases when most of the search engines are no longer case sensitive?"
T.
Dear T,
This can be turned on or off from the advanced menu settings. While there was a time when some search engines were case sensitive, it's true that you no longer need to be concerned with case sensitivity. Of course that is no guarantee that some smaller engines are not case sensitive or that things may change in the future.
Best regards,
John Alexander
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That's all the questions for this week.
Remember that there really are big differences in little tiny words that make up your keyword phrase.
Learn to explore and dig through Wordtracker's data and follow some of these tips. Remember that you can work in Wordtracker for a long time and never discover it all or see it all.
So many people miss great data because of their narrow keyword hunting minds set. There are always fresh trends waiting to be discovered, if you'll just change your thinking to just a little wider scope. Just a different angle.
More observations coming up soon.
Posted by John at March 16, 2008 01:01 PM