Keyword Marketing

SEO aka. Search Engine Optimization is an art. For those of you who don’t know what SEO is, it is the process of optimizing a webpage/website so that that page/site ranks higher in the various search engines. Higher rank=better traffic. There are many keys to proper website SEO, and one of the main ones is the keyword.

Focusing your efforts on certain keywords can really pay off. I have been able to acheive 1st page rankings for several keywords I focused my energies on for various websites I run by properly conducting keyword marketing. The traffic that comes from the right keyword can be very nice!

Keyword Research Tools

Picking and choosing keywords to focus on used to be much more difficult because there weren’t all the tools back in the day that there are today. There are many pay sites you can go to, but there is just as much great info to be found on the many free keyword selector tools. Here is a list of the various free tools you can use to help you out:

The Best Keyword Tools

• Google Keyword Tool – Top Pick – Enter one or various keywords and find out search volume for the previous month and advertiser competition for those terms. Other data the tool gives out are: Estimated Average CPC for each term, Estimated Ad Position (Google AdWords), search volume trends over the past year, and possible negative keywords. Finally, you can also have the tool search your site to see what keywords it sees; this is extremely useful, as it can help you see what Google sees.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool – Top Pick – Based on Overture’s keyword data, this tool offers much more. You can find estimated monthly search volumes for Google, Yahoo, and MSN, “links to price estimate tools from Overture and Google AdWords, links to Google Trends, Google Suggest, Google Synonyms, Yahoo! Suggest, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker keyword research results.” There are tons of other features here and you can spend a long time just exploring all the resources related to a few keywords. This tool is a must for anyone doing keyword optimization!
• Overture Keyword Tool from 123Promotion – Like the other Overture based keyword tools, you can find related terms for any keyword, but where this one is cool is in their estimated searches for the term and related keywords Per Hour (Avg.), Per Day (Avg.), Per Week (Avg.), and Per Month (Previous month). Best of all, it will also project the search traffic over the next 12 months, and will project the traffic per year in 3 Years time.

Other Keyword Tools

• Overture Keyword Tool – The grand-daddy of keyword tools – this one has been around forever. Just enter a keyword you want to learn about and you’ll find other related terms with the number of searches conducted in the previous month for that term.
• DigitalPoint Keyword Selection Tool – Another oldie but goodie. This tool (a bit annoying because of the very long captcha required with searches) just repackages the Overture keyword data, giving related search terms and number of daily searches for those terms.
• Webmaster Toolkit Keyword Tool – Using various search engines, this keyword tool will find related terms based on the one you enter in their form. This tool, I believe, is most useful in seeing the different related keywords that each search engine chooses.

• Brian at SEOMoz tells us that meta-tags are making a comeback.
• Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all agreed on a new xml sitemap protocol for their search engines. Visit Sitemaps.org for more info.
• Jaimie at SEO Egghead gives us 6 Questions To Weed Out Charlatan SEOs. I might add “What are social networks and how are they important?” to the list. If they don’t know that one, well . . . I’d also ask “how do I get more hits for my site?” — if they don’t go on to explain the difference between hits, uniques, page views, etc., I’d stay away!
• I guess independent blogger types and the corporate world just don’t mix. The big news today is that blogging Guru Jason Calcanis resigned from AOL

Looks like the National League is almost set and my Mets at least know who they won’t be facing in the playoffs this week (too bad Pedro is done for!). After a week close to death – I had a really bad reaction to Demerol after a basic medical procedure and am still suffering – I figured it was get back online and share my hell with the world.

While roiling in my own personal Hades, I jumped online and found a really cool tool called HitTail.com, which helps you to discover your underused keywords (the long tail). It is really sweet and updates live! After a day and a half, I’ve already started to find some keywords I could optimize for a little better on my sites.

My other majorly cool find earlier today was a little inspirational read about the Internet’s biggest Google whores from SlyRay. The article talks about 8 internet entrepreneurs who have made serious cash with adsense; minimum to be in the club $10,000/month! Not bad.