Keyword Research Clarity for 2007

This post entitled “Keyword Research Clarity for 2007″ is about a 12 minute, 42 second read, but I guarantee you it will be one of the most stimulating 12 minutes and 42 second reads and will certainly boost your year off in the right direction. It includes a multitude of resources…

1. Survey Results Are In – Where Were You?

In late December, I promised to all NicheBOT subscribers the fact that I would do all that I can in my powers to make 2007 their (and your) best year ever.

I emphasized that this wasn’t some half-hearted promise that I was going to just let fly by just talking the words. Many politicians already move their lips way too much as it is, so no sense in carrying on with jabbering.

So what did I actually do to reinforce the bonds of my words?

My chief marketing coordinator and I took a solid 72 hours to layout a “Tell us what you want” 40-question NicheBOT survey to get a complete assessment and understanding of your online business and where you are right now.

This survey was NicheBOT’s way to fulfill on that promise to deliver the content you are craving, rather than try my hand at reading minds.

If you have not taken the survey, and you care about your future direction in the online business world, please click the blue link above and take an extra 15 minutes out of your day to drop your suggestion in the box. Okay?

I truly expected to see a minimal response. Let’s just say I was overwhelmed by the response and got many valuable things lined up for you. So even if you haven’t taken the NicheBOT survey yet, I think the survey could still stand to gain value from your insightful feedback at whatever level you are at.

Click the NicheBOT “Tell us what you want for 2007″ Survey and you’ll actually get quality content you need the way you want it. It’s simple. You ask, you shall receive.

In fact, just take the survey and I’ll share with you a resource that will reclaim 40 hours of your time a month. Take the NicheBOT survey today.

2. The Resolution Emails Have All Gone out

It appears that all those emails about starting your year off right — you know, the ones about New Year’s resolutions — they have all seemed to taper out. I got all sorts of advice from the different newsletters that I am subscribed to.

Rather than rag on the really bad ones, let’s focus on the positive. I really liked what Gary Bencivenga, a top gun copywriter, had to say about Bob Parson’s 16 Rules of Success to live by. (Bob Parson is the founder of Godaddy.com)

One of the main reasons I liked Gary’s article itself (above) was the common theme it shares with the NicheBOT Survey … to make 2007 your best year ever. And that’s besides the fact that I admire both Gary and his Bullets and Bob Parson’s and his fresh thinking in online business. Speaking of those success rules, what I like about these rules of success to live by is that they are not really confining and give you room to really make the definition of your own success a little more achievable.

Numbers 3, 5, 6, 13 and 14 were my favorite. Which one of the 16 rules of success do you like the best? (comment below in your response)

I can vouch for #3 especially being true because I wanted to give up many times on certain techniques and projects before I actually had some major breakthroughs.

And number 15, “Don’t take yourself too seriously.” This one is especially handy when you find out about things that are a little discomforting or frustrating and you’re about to blow your top.

In our next post, we’ll uncover what not to do when you are looking for a great angle or way to approach your overall web copy to promote your site, blog, product or service as well as taking a look at what your competitors are doing (and one thing NOT to do).

3. Keyword Resarch Clarity for 2007

So let’s now focus and seek to gain keyword research clarity. The same kind of clarity that I was particularly seeking from you in the NicheBOT survey. See, I can’t necessarily offer to promise and deliver on the content and making 2007 your best year ever without getting clear on what you personally need to succeed this year. Right?

And one of the things that I totally saw lacking from any of those New Year’s emails was “keyword research and keeping keywords top shelf in your mind.” So that’s why I wrote this post and titled it “Keyword Research Clarity for 2007.” See…

Quite often I get asked…

“Why doesn’t any of this keyword data match up? One service reports one thing, the other reports something hugely different…”

“I looked up the count for a certain keyword on Keyword Discovery and I looked at my web logs and I’ve got a LOT more traffic coming in compared to what is reported. Is this data even accurate? What can I believe if this stuff doesn’t match up?”

And I’m sitting here saying to myself, “Shoot, a lot of people really believe that the keyword results in the database of these keyword services are supposed to be accurate as to the whole entire world or even one search engine. Or, even worse, that keyword research has some sort of basis in scientific fact.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. And you may find this quite shocking, but all keyword research is almost always wrong.

Don’t worry, I’ll explain what I mean.

In an article published by Jay Stockwell from Keyword Workshop, his sentiments were clearly along the same lines with his article entitled Keyword Data is Almost Always Wrong.

In fact, it’s worth a quick read because Jay so eloquantly gives you a simple breakdown and explanation of the eery title.

Does any of this mean that you abandon keyword research or reliance on keyword data and the data it returns?

Absolutely not!

Reason being is because returning back to the old game of allowing your own brain to suggest keywords pushes you further back into the realm of guessing. And I’m sure you agree that having some sort of keyword data is better than having to guess what the heck people type into the search engines.

So having some information as a guide comes in very handy versus no information, agreed? And that is exactly how keyword research should be approached and judged. Simply, as a guide.

The only true results that should be weighed and judged are the hits you get when you get a top position.

Quite often, I get these emails sounding in frustration when people take their web logs and compare them up against the counts that are reflected at Keyword Discovery, WordTracker or even Overture, and then tell me that the information is just not right. And they are adamant.

It’s like Jay Stockwell implicates in his article above. It’s not that the keyword data is incorrect or even inaccurate, it’s just a sample, a dataset, or a portion of the complete data that is collected by every search engine on planet earth. Having all the data from every search engine is impossible, so we are looking at a slice or a sliver.

Then there are other factors that skew results and make weird results turn up, such as lesser appealing types of webmasters that run automated robotics searches on the major search engines. And all these robots is inflate the count for a particular keyword and the robots do enough searches that end up getting logged and show up in the keyword databases. That’s another complaint we get are the weird variations of keywords that are found in the results from both premium services, WordTracker and Keyword Discovery. And what I mention is the only reasonable explanation for such weird keywords.

Again — it’s not that the data is wrong or inaccurate, there are other circumstances that are beyond the control of the search engines and the keyword services that house the databases.

I also think that one of the Rules of Success apply here. Don’t take yourself too seriously, which ultimately translates into YOU not taking the keyword research numbers too seriously. Like I say above, keyword research is a guide and not an exact science.

I urge you to give Jay’s article a quick read and walk in awareness rather than utter dependence that the data has to come through with the results you expect.

I say, “Expect nothing — and you’ll simply be surprised by the results.”

The only truth that matters and the outcome that you care about is the traffic a top 10 listing can give you.

In fact, there are other circumstances that you may or may not see the kind of traffic you deserve even if you do have a top 10, or top 20 search engine listing.

Did you know that the search engines include your < title > tag as the first line of your search listing, your Meta Description tag as the second line *most of the time* and your domain name on the third line.

These tags in your web pages that comprise the Search Engine listing are like a Yellow Pages advertisement.

Also realize that you are competing with 10 other people on a search engine page out there and if you think that the language and how enticing your words are will have an impact on your listing getting clicked over other websites on the same page, you’re absolutely right. Thus, I ultimately make sure to have a really enticing title tag, meta description tag and as well as focus on most of the time getting a keyword rich domain name that describes what the site is about.

Are you double-checking that the keyword you are focusing on and the content on the page match? If the visitor experience is high on the page and your content is consistent with the focus of the keyword, you’ll more than likely get a visitor to take the action you want, which is to either make a sale or leave their name and email address with you.

But remember that your website visitor’s experience begins before they ever reach your website — right at the search engine listing level. You already begin to set the expectation level with the text you have in those tags that get displayed to the Internet surfer.

Go read your search engine listings for the pages where you have some top spots and ask yourself, “If I were a visitor looking for information on this topic and I landed on this page for this keyword, would I click on my own listing or the others on the page?” And if you answer that you would click on the other listings, then you need to sit down and work on making your search engines listing more enticing and alluring.

Do I look to different keyword databases to figure out which keywords NicheBOT or any of our other sister sites will focus on?

Absolutely!

Again — the clarity of Keyword Research for 2007 is to use the information as a guide.

In fact, your focus this year should be more on production of content and acquiring quality inbound links to pages that have content consistent with the keyword in the hyperlink.

More time should be spent on producing new content for the search engines that is “keyword focused” then calculating KEI totals with competition.

I see too many people, people that are even close to me, that are bludgeoning themselves to death as a result of over-analysis which then leads to analysis-paralysis. Don’t allow yourself to become subject to this — you’ll get nothing done. I’ve been there myself.

Remember — the real tests results which show how much traffic a keyword truly produces is by you yourself going after those keywords and getting the top positions. Then you look at your website’s logs to see how many people really do come from the search engines for that particular keyword. And those are truth in numbers.

So the ultimate point here is that the focus for 2007 should be on production vs. analyzing keywords to death. If you can automate the analysis, that’s great. But I truly believe that training your brain and conditioning your mind to hand select the prime targeted keywords that will tightly relate to your theme will give you better ultimate success. Focusing on getting more content launch and more ways of obtaining inbound links is the action that will make things happen.

Remember how I said that your title tag, meta description tag and domain name are like your Yellow Pages advertising in the offline world? Well, would you rather have a Yellow Pages advertisement that pulls like a little teenie-tiny classified type ad or one of those big honker 1/2 page color ads? That’s the difference making sure your keyword and the content around your keywords is so important. It’s literally critical to the user experience when they reach the page, but even moreso when the visitor is still at the search engines looking for the right information. The contents of your listing do make a difference.

So what do I mean by focusing on production?

By this, I mean the number of keyword focused pages you intend to put online this year. How many articles or reciprocal links do you intend to acquire that point into your site using your preferred keywords in the anchor text?

It is my personal intention to publish approximately 500 articles this year alone to our parent company’s portfolio of sites. Who knows how much traffic and inbound links that will give us, but it’ll sure make a different in search engine power and number of visitors.

So that’s what I mean by production.

Pick something — decide how many units of things you will do to specifically promote your site with your keywords.

Make a statement.

Declare it to someone.

“I’m going to acquire 250 link partners this year!”

Make a plan, focus on it every day — and you will get there if you persist!

And if you are still stuck looking for what to do on the net and are just beginning or you are just struggling to finally get a griphold on your industry, I’ve got your plan set out for the year. This is the advice I give to my hundreds of students and I would only afford to give the same to you.

Take this year to focus, build and develop one talent. I mean, master it! One highly focused talent or skill that has to do with producing results in the amount of visitors and traffic to your site. Something that will worth every time.

Whether it’s learning how to attract traffic from MySpace, social bookmarking, or just using articles and trading links. Master it!!!

Put your credit card away and ONLY pull it out when you have to buy a tool that has to do with mastering one technique, one aspect of building traffic.

Traffic is a basic survival need in this online landscape. Long term success is not possible without evergreen traffic sources.

Whether this has to do with putting together a system like I did with my Total Niche Market Domination website promotion course for getting reciprocal link partners, or the article marketing system entitled “The Ultimate Website Traffic Funnel that my paid consultant and Army Captain Tim Gorman shared with my NicheBOT users. It doesn’t matter, but you should be more busy this year on developing one true skill.

That is truly some of THE best advice I could give you, in general, with making this your best year ever. Even if you don’t make it a stellar year, focusing on one thing this year could pay off in a big manner next year when your website traffic begins to geometrically grow.

Combing Keyword Combinations

And lastly, one of the ways to bring some keyword clarity for 2007 is to get the most bang for your buck or your effort when planting links out there on outside web pages.

Use combination keywords that contain two keywords that are your prime target.

Consolidate the keyword combinations and use 3-5 keywords in your hyperlink text.

When NicheBOT primarily focused on the two keyword phrases “keyword research” and “keyword services” — we just combined the phrase “keyword research services” to make each link count for “keyword research” “keyword services” and “keyword research services.” This is more efficient than splitting up efforts on “keyword research” and “keyword services” separately. Make sense?

I hope you got something of value here and please stay tuned next time when we explore finding your certain angle for your product or service and a marketing lesson of what you should NOT do by any stretch of the imagination when planning your website’s selling proposition. And many other things planned. So…

See you back here next time and wishing you an absolutely wonderful outcome for this year.

Best,

Jim Morris, President/CEO

Full Throttle Enterprises, Inc.

NicheBOT – “Finds exactly what people searched for.”

P.S. Looking for a free sample keyword list from NicheBOT 2 or just want to discover some profitable niches on a daily basis by email? Find out how one man received this free email, got one keyword idea, built a site and is now making $200-$300 per day… all because of NicheAday.com.

P.P.S. I just recently had a graphic design artist create a bunch of site templates for one of our parent company’s online properties. Unfortunately, we went a little overboard and have some surplus. Fortunately for you, I just kinda went bazonkers and decided to give away a website template a day to my valued subscribers. And these are NOT throw away templates, but real geniune unique designs. Get in before someone gets the mind to charge for these.