===> Inadequate Keyword Research

Hey! If you’re going to spend hours developing a web site, isn’t it smart to invest some time to insure you’re focusing on most traffic laden keywords?

Especially when typically plural form of a keyword phrase generates way more traffic than singular form. For example "dog dishes" rather than "dog dish".

Yet just this week I was asked to look at a site that had focused on singular form. Evidently owner hadn’t bothered to do any digging to make sure that was their best keyword move.

Look, you’ll never know for sure unless you research it. Besides, you can access Wordtracker, tool of choice for what? a measly $7 a day.

Even better here’s a quick and dirty way to get most out of that day.

Search for your target keyword in Google.

Visit top ranking sites. Use "View Source" feature of Internet Explorer to check out keyword meta tag of each site. You're looking for a site listing lots of keywords there. Do this with each of top listings or until you find one stuffed to gills with keywords. Ah-ha! There’s your starting point for your list of likely keyword phrases.

Repeat with a couple of other sites and you’ll soon have a long list of candidates to check out in Wordtracker.

Enhance your list further using this tool:

http://www.promoteindia.com/keywordtool-beta.htm.

It will give you more keyword ideas from Google and Overture.

Now you’re ready for Wordtracker.

Once you’ve compiled your Wordtracker results, you could simply sort by KEI and then by searches per day.

That gives you strongest keywords with most searches. (And yes, I realize KEI assumes all search engine listings are of equal value. But I did say this was "quick and dirty" didn't I? However if you want another approach that improves on KEI there’s a spreadsheet available at http://www.seo-works.com/seo-resources/keyword-effectiveness-rank.html)

Each article was written to inform and appeal to human readers. Search engines were incidental in my mind. I wasn't systematic about submitting new ones on a regular basis so they built momentum. Nor was I careful to emphasize my website's keywords and principal theme. But I do now--it matters. Despite that, articles already posted have been hard at work for me.

My list of places for submitting keeps expanding. And it's further refined with every article posted. After a year and a half, that's a large list (nearly a thousand). And I'm a known quantity with sites and ezines that consistently post my contributions. My best-received article to date shows 181 Google mentions (with their related incoming links).

Starting from Zero Online Visibility I launched a new website mid-June, 2004, using article marketing as primary traffic-building strategy (Yellow Page Sage, getting your Yellow Page ad and website working together). The first article was a strong one, getting 135 Google cites.

Over next three months I wrote and posted seven articles related to Yellow Pages or Local Search. The website also provided extensive information about Yellow Page advertising by other authors--making it very sticky and content-rich.

Creating an Article 12-pack After they were submitted to my list, I combined those seven articles with five of my prior marketing articles - twelve in all (with a link to each article). Instead of offering them as onesees, I now send whole batch (letting receiver pick what they want).

I prepared a letter offering 12-pack, asking if they want to receive similar future ones. That letter is only sent to websites I've visited. I'd never offer it to a site unless there's a good fit. Sending out 12-pack is an ongoing activity, and another way to expand my list. Some websites have posted whole set - twelve return links from one letter!