Optimizing Keyword Tags with Wordtracker
What is a keyword?
According to Wikipedia,
The term keyword […] refers to a word or phrase (combination of words, such as ‘Chicago Courier Service’) used to find relevant and useful webpage.
Crafting the content and structure of your website to rank highly for your selected keywords is the art of “Search Engine Optimization.” I’m not trying to write an article about SEO, there are entire blogs, books and businesses that cover SEO. But I would like to introduce you to a few ideas about keywords.
Wordtracker is a company that uses information from actual search engine databases to help you find keywords for your articles, websites and blog posts. Here are a few screen shots of me actually using Wordtracker for a recent post I wrote.
Using “Keyword Thinking”, I logged into my Keyword Account to figure out how I could maximize potential search engine traffic for this very post by using a keyword phrase with active searchers but little competition.
Using Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Tools
Here’s how it went…
First I logged into my Wordtracker account, and entered two keywords into the Keyword Researcher area of the page. I simply used two general phrases that I thought applied to my intended post, “Search Engine Rankings” and “Webmaster Tools”.
The first thing WordTracker does is look through its database for the phrases you typed in, and shows you similar phrases to the kewords you typed in. You can get anywhere from just a handful to 300 additional potential keyword phrases that you might not have thought of! Can you see how much potential a keyword tool has for helping you maximize your search engine results?
With keyword tools like Wordtracker, you can get an insiders peek at what phrases people are actually using, and then focus on those phrases. It doesn’t mean you have to change the content of your post or webpages, it simply means you can customize your post titles and headers in order to maximize search results.
Discovering your Keyword Efficiency Index, or KEI…
The next step is to click on “evaluate” and Wordtracker does it’s magic. The resulting table shows you how many times the keyword has been typed into engines in the Wordtracker database in the past 90 days, and an estimated number of times the phrase is typed into global search engines on a daily basis. This information is available in Wordtracker’s Free Trial version.
But how much competition do I have?
But with a paid subscription, you are able to see how many competing webpages exist on each of the major search engines as well as a “Keyword Efficiency Index” or KEI. The KEI is a reflection of the number of daily searches versus the number of competing pages on the major search engines.
A keyword with high searches and low competition will score a high KEI. Those are the prime keywords you want to search for.
How do you choose a keyword phrase based on KEI?
When I sorted my Wordtracker results by the Google KEI score, one keyword phrase stood out as having a reasonable number of searches with low competition, and thus a reasonably high KEI of about 9. In general, anything above 10 is pretty good, results between 1 & 10 are reasonable, and anything less than 1 is not really worth trying to optimize for because there is simply too much competition.
Here’s the screenshot with the keyword phrase highlighted. Look familiar? It’s the title of this post!
So what’s the end result of all of this?
Hopefully using Wordtracker to find high KEI keyword phrases will help this particular post stand out in the search engine results, and I’ll get a lot of “organic” search engine traffic for this particular post.
I’m sure you can see the potential power of this type of keyword research for your website! Just pop on over to the free keyword tool at Wordtracker and try it out. In order to use the free keyword tool, you’ll just have to supply a valid email address and confirm the trial. Your confirmation link is good for two hours after it’s sent and you can conduct unlimited searches.
Want to use it again? Just reapply for the free trial (you can even use the same email address!). With the free keyword tool, you won’t be able to see the KEI directly, but you’ll get an idea of the potential that this type of research tool can have for your websites as far as increasing your search engine traffic.
Download the Free Keyword Guide by wordtracker for more information about keyword research.
Got any other keyword tools you like to use? Let me know about them!
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Nice post about wordtracker.
but what about other services ? like seodigger.com ? or overture?
Hi G, I’ve used overture before, but not Seodigger. Does seodigger give you info on competing pages and KEI, or are there any limits to the number of keywords returned?
Right now I’m doing a trial of keyword paid version, it’s pretty nice, but I will probably check out a few others as well. Thanks!
[…] I included a screen shot with some KEI results showing a great potential keyphrase, Improved Search Engine Rankings, then stated it was the title of my post. Turns out, it was NOT the title of my post…it was the title of a post not yet written! I had been using Wordtracker for the draft post, and then decided I wanted to go ahead and write a post about optimizing keyword tags. […]