The Wonders of Wordtracker:. . . It's More than a Hunt for Keywords by John Alexander

The Wonders of Wordtracker:. . . It's More than a Hunt for Keywords by John Alexander

For me personally, Wordtracker.com is not just a tool for looking
up keywords. Sure, that's one good use for it, but what I want to
distinguish is another influential and exciting use for
Wordtracker as an SEO resource.

"Keywords" for use in your Meta tags are probably the least
influential element in search engine optimization these days.
However, hunting for keywords still seems the most popular use
for Wordtracker. After all, it contains over 336 million queries
within its database, which is no older than 60 days. An SEO can
spend long periods of time doing research and hunting for
keywords. But let's really try and get our minds around the
keyword hunting issue for a minute, and I'll explain a few other
tips for using Wordtracker.

Identify your target audience's "surfing behavior" Is there any
greater discovery than having an understanding of a target
audience's "surfing behavior?" It's like a light coming on in
your mind. It's like flipping on a switch to an idea generator!
Wordtracker will give you absolutely AMAZING detail if you take
time to think about it laterally and outside of the context of
just a "keyword hunt."

Later in this article, I'll explain how you can use WordTracker
to identify your audience's surfing behavior.

Move beyond the "keyword universe" function.

In speaking with many search engine optimizers, I have learned
that so many seem to get stuck in the "Keyword Universe" feature.
The ability to generate lists of keyword phrases using the built
in thesaurus is nice, but you must not get stuck there and let it
do all the thinking for you. As you move on to discover other
features within Wordtracker, you will also have the opportunity
to perform a "comprehensive search" or an "exact search" or
utilize the "top 1000" report.

Tips to identify human behavior?

Where you'll find most of your "revelations" or "insights" are in
the "comprehensive search" feature of Wordtracker. Try entering
one part of a search phrase and letting "comprehensive search"
figure out the best "full use" of the phrase. Another technique I
like to use is to examine the top reports for a "high
performance" keyword or topic related to my client and then cut
and paste it into comprehensive search to get streams of
currently "hot topics." I define a hot topic as a popular topic
in high demand, which may also have lists of related keyword
phrases also in high demand.

Let's study a real life example . . .

Now let me give you a recent example of understanding behaviors.
I wanted to pull additional traffic into a site selling baby
furniture. The site sells strollers, baby furniture, cribs and
other baby products. The client explained that they wanted me to
find ways to pull in their true audience. Sometimes you'll
discover the true audience is not what it first may seem. By true
audience....I mean "targeted audience" or the folks most likely
to "BUY" or "respond" to the Web site.

If you just think only in "keywords" mode, you may miss this.

Performing a comprehensive search within Wordtracker by typing in
the word "baby," Wordtracker returns interesting results. Do you
know what I learned? The target audience for baby strollers is
NOT people who have babies! You heard correct. The "true
audience" for those buying strollers and baby cribs ARE NOT
"folks who have NEWBORN BABIES!" Here is the catch....if you are
targeting folks with newborns, to sell them a stroller....you're
too late! The true audience are people who are "soon to become
parents."

Once Mom and Dad know a new family member is on the way, they
start buying BEFORE the baby arrives. Better yet...often it's not
even the parents who are buying...it's the grandparents. Perhaps
you have pages scoring tremendously well for things like babies,
strollers, cribs and baby furniture...... but now your client
wants even more.

Here's an example strategy:

One behavior of the true target audience which I discovered by
using Wordtracker was as follows. As I entered the term "baby"
into "comprehensive search," the first thing I noticed was the
top phrase "baby names" which had been requested on major search
engines over 34,350 times in the last 60 days. It became very
obvious when I noticed the incredibly high demands on major
search engines for the phrase "baby names," or how about
"meanings of baby names."

This was indeed like a light coming on! I thought, imagine this,
"soon to be parents" are researching their unborn child's name by
using the Internet. What better time to connect with folks than
before the baby is born.

Finally, build a strategy based on the identified behavior

Suppose we were to build a little library of themed pages right
into your client's site to attract the TARGET audience. They are
searching for baby names so it is essential that this is what you
MUST give them. Give them lists of baby names to choose from,
right? Don't ever trick your audience or they will simply never
buy. Give them exactly what they are looking right up front. In
this example, you could create pages that offer baby names and
meanings of baby names AND subtly offer a few product listings or
links to your client's store front. It is essential that you
always provide content related to their search first, and then
you might offer some links to other appropriate products within
your client's site.

Test these unique ways for using Wordtracker yourself, and learn
how effective they can be.

Good luck!
About the Author
John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine
Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner,
3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive "hands on" search engine
marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also
teaches online search engine marketing courses through
http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and hes a member of
Wordtrackers official question support team.