Nowadays, there are a number of keyword and competitive intelligence tools on the market. One of my favorites, and one that we’ve used for several years now, is Wordtracker.

Wordtracker has a database of about 330 million search terms which are updated weekly. There are a few bells and whistles but, essentially, Wordtracker allows you to type in a phrase e.g. ‘tomato soup’ and it will generate all the related terms used by search engine users in the previous period.

For each generated search term, Wordtracker will, among other things, give you the ‘count’ - the number of times people have entered the keyword from all the search queries in Wordtracker’s database - the estimated number of searches in a 24 hour period - and the number of competing web pages for each keyword in the relevant search engines.

What I particularly like about Wordtracker is that it’s comprehensive and offers good value for money. In fact, it’s free if you simply wish to generate a list of up to 100 related keywords. If you want full functionality, you can subscribe for $59 per month or $329 per annum.

Overall, Wordtracker is a great keyword tool for:

1. Niche research i.e. to see how popular certain keywords are in order to investigate the viability of a particular niche market;
2. Building a list of keywords for search engine marketing purposes (search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising); and
3. Selecting ‘trigger’ words to incorporate in your website copy and other marketing material. As discussed yesterday, ‘trigger’ words are those words uppermost in your prospects’ minds. When you use such words in your copy you’re more likely to attract your prospects’ attention and deepen their interest in what you have to offer.

Now, Wordtracker also faces some stiff competition these days. One of its chief competitors, Trellian, actually has its headquarters just a few streets away from me, here in Melbourne, Australia.

My husband has chatted with the Trellian guys a few times and what they have to offer is very impressive, albeit more expensive than Wordtracker.

I’ll tell you more about them and their product offerings in a future Lab article. In the meantime, if you’re interested in a solid, value-for-money keyword tool, take a look at Wordtracker.

You can visit http://www.wordtracker.com or go through our affiliate link:

==> Wordtracker

Based on Hitwise’s top search terms for September 2008, the most popular terms in the ‘Shopping Rewards and Directories’ category were (in order):

coupons
grocery
coupons
free samples
black friday 2008
black friday
free stuff
consumer reports
free coupons

‘Black Friday’ is a reference to the Friday after Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. This traditionally marks the first day of the shopping season.

While ‘Black Friday’ may be popular at this time of year… the terms ‘coupons’, ‘grocery coupons’, ‘free samples’, ‘free stuff’ and ‘consumer reports’ are consistently popular terms in this category. They were also in the top 10 for the same category in January 2008… and similar terms appeared in the top 10 back in June 2007.

If you run an online business, knowing the most popular keywords used by your target market is certainly relevant. But not just for search engine optimization (SEO) reasons. It’s also relevant in terms of knowing the ‘trigger’ words that are likely to attract your prospects’ attention and interest in what you have to offer.

In other words, knowing such trigger words will enable you to use them in your copy - again, not just for SEO purposes, but to resonate with your target market. Simply because you are using the words that are on their minds.

So how do you find out the trigger words for YOUR target market? Well, just like Hitwise, you could research the most popular words used by search engine users looking for the kind of products or services you offer. To do that you need one or more keyword tools.

The free Google AdWords Keyword Tool is one such tool you can use. Another is Wordtracker. I’ll explain Wordtracker – and why we use it – tomorrow.

Source: ClickZ, “Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories”, October 2008, ClickZ, November 20, 2008

A guest post on the Hitwise blog by search engine optimizer / analyst Dustin Woodward, suggests that the long tail of search might be much longer than most of us expected.

Woodard evaluated a data set of search terms used in the last three months, and found that the top 1,000 search terms only accounted for about 10 percent of all search traffic.

Indeed, the Hitwise’s top 100 search terms account for just 5.7 percent of all search traffic, while the top 1,000 search terms only account for 10.6% of all search traffic. Even the top 10,000 search terms drive just 18.5 percent of all search traffic.

What does this mean for Internet marketers? Well, it does NOT mean you should try to optimize your site for all those long tail keywords. Together they may account for a lot of searches, but if anything, Woodard’s analysis confirms the fact that long tail terms are infrequently searched on i.e. they are likely to be ‘one-offs’.

There may still be opportunities to pick up traffic for such one-offs, but trying to target such keywords is unlikely to pay off – simply because such words are unlikely to be searched on next month.

So it still pays to optimize for the most popular, relevant keywords you can afford to target. And if you want to be creative, think into the future rather than the past. In other words, instead of targeting last month’s long tail keywords, think about what keywords you think will become popular, based on trends in your market or industry.

Source: Frederic Lardinois, “Hitwise: The Long Tail of Search is Much Longer Than Expected”, ReadWriteWeb, November 7, 2008

Online search intelligence firm Hitwise has released the top 10 searched on words for September 2008.

The ClickZ Network has published the top 10 in various categories. The top keyword for the IT and Internet category was ‘paypal’ and the top word for Net Communities and Chat category was ‘netflix’.

Check out the list here.

Source: The ClickZ Network, “Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, September 2008″, The ClickZ Network, Oct 27, 2008

In an interview with US Today magazine, Google’s high profile engineer and blogger Matt Cutt’s has revealed his top 5 tips for ranking higher in Google.

Useful advice but if you’re an SEO pro be prepared to be… underwhelmed. Cutts’ top 5 tips are:

1. Use search terms on your webpages. You want your webpage to rank higher for a given phrase? Make sure it’s actually on the page!
2. Fill in the Title and Description tags with your targeted terms… but give the Keywords tag a miss (Google practically ignores it).
3. Get back links from other sites – back links are given a higher weighting than any of the 100+ data pieces considered by Google’s algorithm when determining a site’s natural search results ranking. (To the search engine marketing firm that continues to mislead its clients into believing that on-page factors are still the most important of all: Google has just spoken.)
4. Launch a blog, post to it, and post often. Blogging allows you to easily create content (more search engine spider food), are more frequently visited by the search engines, and facilitate links back to your website.
5. Register for free tools, such as Google’s webmaster tools. Whether giving you information about who is linking to your site, or how often Google visits your site, such tools will help you attain greater search engine visibility for your site.

Source: Jefferson Graham, “Google’s Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website”, USA Today, June 22, 2008

Move over Alexa (and Comcast, Comscore and Quantcast) – Google has just released a tool – Google Trends – which displays trends in the number of visits per website and the number of searches per keyword.

Oops - before you get too excited, there are some limitations to the tool. Firstly, it doesn’t use actual traffic or search data, but instead uses a combination of aggregated Google search data, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. Good for privacy advocates… not so good if you want to know exactly how much traffic your competitors’ websites are receiving! Secondly, the tool seems to only track very popular websites and search terms.

On the positive side, Google Trends allows you to choose both the time frame and the specific region you wish to track – very useful if your market is regional. And if you have a Google webmaster account, you can also see the number of visitors or searches (as the case may be). Plus, there are future plans to enable you to export this data.

I recommend using Google Trends as one of the tools in your arsenal for performing market and competitive analysis. In case the tool disappoints, however, you may be pleased to know that Mozilla – the makers of Firefox – also have a traffic/search data tool in the works.

Word is that Mozilla’s tool will provide more accurate data on traffic and searches since it will be based on the actual browsing habits of Firefox users. Of course, the search habits of Firefox users may differ from those of general browser users, but with some 18 percent of the browser market these days, Firefox is certainly progressing towards mainstream use.

Click here to use Google Trends

Source: Michael Arrington, “Mozilla Stealth Data Project Could Be Just What The Internet Needs”, May 13, 2008