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A Cre8asite Forums member was very happy with herself when she realized that she hit the #1 position for a search phrase that had over 70 million results. Who wouldn't be? That takes a lot of time and effort...
But then she analyzed her logs. She got no traffic. Zilch.
And why? When looking at the results on Google for the same phrase, the competition was Microsoft, government sites, and universities.
And then she looked further. Apparently, using a keyword research tool, she discovered that nobody searches for that term anyway!
What are the takeaways? If rankings are even on the radar for you, do the keyword research first.
Now that you're in the #1 spot, take advantage of it without compromising it. Optimize that page better for more targeted results. It can be a lot of fun and a challenge at the same time.
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
Comments:
Jonathan Dingman
01/11/2008 03:34 pm
Oh how true that is. Keyword research is important, very important. Finding what people are actually looking for is probably the most important factor. I even sometimes will beg to differ that being #2 or #3 will drive more traffic than being #1. A good catch though, so a suggestion to everyone, like Tamar says, choose your keywords carefully which you want to optimize for.
handsome rob
01/11/2008 03:45 pm
I sometimes use Google Suggest as part of my keyword research, but result counts can be deceiving. The phrase "click here" has 1.98 Billion results, but punch it into any keyword research tool and you'll see just how much traffic that will actually bring you. I think results counts are best used to gauge phrase/language/terminology usage. See what people actually CALL the specific product or service that you're pushing.
azhar
01/11/2008 05:45 pm
How can i do key word research ? Can anyone give me some details about it ?
Dizzle
01/15/2008 01:23 am
Lets not forget the use of common sense on the topic. Yes as marketers we can forget what the common schmo may type to find your service or product, but geez, to build an SEO campaign around keywords that no one uses sounds pretty clueless. Do i search for "Sanitary Engineer" or "Janitorial Services". Hmmmmm?
eitan
01/20/2008 07:43 pm
Google suggestion tool and traffic check are good tools to check competition based on ppc but are limited to a sclae of 1-5. I recommend wordtracker. it has a trial you can use for as long as you want...
Francis
02/10/2009 10:56 am
I found Active web traffic a good tool to help you identify the best keywords. My site is now getting some traffic and people are able to get my beautiful post.
Rob Abdul
02/10/2009 07:33 pm
I rank modestly well for keywords that return millions of results, but alas, I do not get any traffic from it. Francis, you get some serious traffic on your site, also like your cleaver placements of adsense, nice.