Keywords are the fundamental building blocks of successful search engine marketing. If you don’t get them right you will find that everything you expect to follow simply will not. Targeting the right keywords is everything and is the most necessary ingredient to online success for your business.

Does this sound like online marketing 101? A foolishly simplistic bit of advice. Perhaps, but consider this: Nearly everyone, professional and amateur is basing their selection and purchase of keywords on data that couldn’t be more distorted if it were being viewed through a funhouse mirror.

Take a few moments to read on and set yourself apart from the vast majority of online marketers who don’t understand and thereby misuse the results supplied by the two most basic keyword selection tools. The assumption about Overture’s STST and Wordtrackers’s KSS is that the results they give, while different are somehow straightforward and require no interpretation. Given that these tools are nearly all we have to bring keyword choices into focus and make intelligent decisions in the midst of rising keyword pay-per-click costs and increasingly keen competition.

The key to reading the tealeaves lies in an attempt to answer, with hard numbers, the following question.

Why are the keyword search query numbers supplied by Overture’s search term suggestion tool (STST) so incredibly different than those supplied by Wordtracker’s keyword selection service (KSS)?

The answer to this question will precipitate a change in the way you evaluate keywords and thereby how well they work for you. The short answer is that Overture and Wordtracker are different types of businesses. Let’s explore.

Overture’s STST is a tool which was designed to help users buy keywords. And it may go without saying but it needs to be said, Overture is helping you to buy keywords from Overture.

Wordtrackers purpose is a tool to help users in their selection of keywords which will help your optimization efforts. And to help you decide which to buy elsewhere.

So Overture makes its money as the keyword retailer whereas worktracker makes it’s money being sort of the Consumer Reports of keywords.

Overture succeeds when it convinces you that there are a lot of searches for what you are selling. They make their money when you buy in to their data and purchase keywords from them. Wordtracker succeeds when it convinces you that you have made keyword decisions based on the realest and most accurate data available. They are fee based and their profits hinge on the accuracy of the data they provide.

Different types of businesses, indeed.

Decoding the data.

Take for instance the search team “keyword,” Overture’s STST show there were 180,468 searches for the 30-day period ending the last day of December. When you divide this number by 30 (days), you get an average of 6,016 combined searches per day for the term “keyword”.

I’d like to buy that keyword if I was going to get 6016 sentient beings looking at my site every day. Therein lies the reason for Overture returning this particular take on the facts. It’s not that their numbers are inflated, it’s just that they aren’t properly deflated. In a moment you’ll read how, once adjusted, these numbers are pretty low.

Adjustment number 1. Artificial searches.

You’re going to want to take these out of the number. Overture’s STST numbers include automated bid optimizers, position and ranking monitors, page popularity analyzers. These will never buy anything from your site. As far as you’re concerned any hit generated by automated software should be disregarded. This group also includes page-popularity checkers, pay-per-click bid optimizers or any other machine generated monitor or tabulator that queries an engine for a “pet” keyword .

When these automated faux hit generators are done pumping up the numbers on Overture they go over to MSN, an Overture partner, and do the same thing. Overture adds another hit. In Overtures defense, there is no way for them to differentiate between a hit from a person or an automated one. Like I said, they haven’t inflated their numbers.

As you can see search term query tabulations are swelled significantly by these automated queries.

There are other aspects that contribute to these artificially high numbers. We continue with our adjustments.

Adjustment number 2- Duplicate Searches

Overture’s viability as an advertising medium for online businesses hinges on the fact that they provide lts to “tens of thousands of Web sites” which include AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN Search, HotBot, and AllTheWeb and many more. They purport to reach 80% of active U.S. Internet users.

Similar to their high numbers this fact, taken out of context sounds great to potential advertisers. But it’s part of the same hype cycle that has their numbers so high.

According to Overture itself, statistics on searches are compiled from Overtures partner search engines. This furthers the distortion of query counts. Here’s how.

When, for instance, a visitor conducts a search on AltaVista, there are really two searches being conducted. One at AltaVista and one that lists the Sponsored Matches supplied by Overtures pay-per-click engine.

It’s not possible to know the exact degree of the distortion of query counts as a result of this but what can certainly be gleaned is that one person often generates multiple hits when doing a single search.

If that user seeks additional results and tries his search on another engine which happens to be a partner of Overture there will be more hits still calculated by Overture. Google counts only searches that were done “on-site” and eliminates duplicate searches in their count query. If Overture did the same, their numbers would be further adjusted downward, or as I’ve said properly deflated.

Adjustment number 3- Plurals and Singulars

Overture combines the plural and singular in compling their query count.

They combine not upper case and lower case results as well. These factors apply upward pressure to their numbers as well.

Ok. So Overture is providing using some fuzzy numbers. What can you do to get a clearer picture?

Using Meta-Engines is a better way to calculate queries. You can get numbers which don’t include artificial and duplicate queries by using Composite engines like Metacrawler and Dogpile.

Auto-bots aren’t pointed at these composite engines because there’s nothing to be gained by doing so. Ergo Searches conducted on Meta engines are more likely do be done by sentient beings.

Meta Engines do not offer pay-per-click options. And they do not “add-url’s” so they do not attract bot traffic.

Meta Engines don’t have duplicate searches in their query counts either. This is because their results are compiled from a single source and not combined from many partner sites.

Using Meta Engines helps get your numbers down into a more realistic area but there are problems that occur there too. For instance keyword spam.

This involves using cgi-scripting to manipulate the Metaspy metacrawler voyeur.

By conducting searches at set intervals, spammers try to inflate the importance of certain search terms to artificially increase the value terms related to their business.

A Word about Plural, singular, upper and lower case searches.

SEO’s have to decide how they are going to deal with this issue. There are costs and benefits to combining query search numbers in different scenarios.

Sometimes the difference between singular and plural as far as meaning are slight and the words can be treated as the same. There combining results makes sense. Other times you have a different situation. Take for example the words “tap, taps, Tap, and TAP” Look at the results on Overture for the search term “tap” All of the following were found in the top ten sponsored listings.

Machine threading taps,
Tap / Rap support software
Beer taps
Tap Dancing
TAP A Stock
TAP Terminal Phone Numbers

These have nothing in common obviously, but this is the sort of imprecision that results from combining singular, plural, uppercase and lowercase keywords.

Sharpening up the fuzzy numbers and achieving proper deflation of the Overture keyword query counts.

Overture’s STST shows 180,468 searches were conducted. This includedes the combined count of the search terms keyword, keywords, Keywords, KEYWORD and KEYWORDS – the combined total of all singular, plural, capitalized, upper and lower-case searches.

Then Divided by 30 you get 6,016 searches per day that meet this criteria.

Really though, they receive just 40-60 per day total

Here’s how we did the deflating -

Fact: Overture’s STST suggests a combined average of 6,016 page views took place between Overture and its major partners.

Fact: Each of these results pages lists between 10 and 40 URLs with descriptions.

Factor in Zipf’s Law which states that traffic for any keyword on a search engine will be in proportion with its popularity rank.

Factor in how the title and description affect a user’s likelihood to click on a Web site.

Factor Penn State University’s findings that 55% of users check out one search result only, and 80% stop after looking at three results.

Factor in known elements leading to an estimated, but educated, conclusion as such…

Also consider that Wordtracker’s Web site appears in the top-ten of Overture’s results throughout their partner sites, this would suggest they would be getting about 10% of the total click-throughs from all major engines, pay-per-clicks, and directories.

This would be about 602 visitors per day.

But Wordtracker is currently ranked 1-10 on just around 25% of the major engines, directories and pay-per-click portals for the search term, keyword(s)… Calculate the estimate…

Ergo, the Wordtracker site should expect roughly 25% of this predicted click-through traffic, which is 150 visitors per day.

So when you compare the calculated estimate to the known facts…

Wordtracker receives 10-15 visitors per day for the search term keyword(s) Overtures STST overestimates this by a factor of ten.

Wordtracker estimates they receive 25% of the total traffic. This indicates that the total traffic is about 40-60 per day.

Wordtracker’s service returns very different data.

Using the same search term(s) keyword(s), we pulled a result from the Wordtracker database (on January 13, 2004) that predicts searches per day conducted throughout the
major engines, directories and pay-per-clicks on the Internet.

The results were…

keyword – 93 searches (lower case, singular)
Keyword – 39 searches (Capitalized, singular)
keywords – 187 searches (lower case, plural)
Keywords – 184 searches (Capitalized, plural)
KEYWORD – 115 searches (UPPER case, singular)
Total Predicted Daily Searches for all Engines = 618

This number – 618 – Wordtracker took directly from results taken from Meta-engines, Metacrawler and Dogpile to get rid of results distortion.

Wordtracker further adjusted the number downward by filtering out keyword spam. Keyword spam is filtered out by finding search terms that are being searched at intervals too regular be coming from people.

If the searches are too regular they are assumed to be artificially generated and taken out before arriving at the final number – 618.

Considering even such dependent variables such as position, title, and description, we would predict a website to receive about 10% of the total traffic due to top-ten placement, targeted title and relevant link-description.

And finally, we should expect no better than 25% of that total traffic, due to the fact that Wordtracker has top-ten placement in only 25% of the relevant engines.

So the calculations show…

618 x 10% = 61.8 x 25% = approx 15 visits per day.

This jibes much more closely with Wordtracker’s actual 10-15 per day average number of visits generated by the 5 variations of the search term keyword across all of the major engines.

Now what do you do? Who’s numbers do you like?

It depends of course on what you’re using them for. Are you trying to ascertain the relative popularity of a item or topic? Overture can help you with that and it’s free. It paints a good broad brush picture of relative position between terms.

Take this example:

58,312 home insurance
57,315 home owner insurance
233,854 auto insurance
570,337 car insurance

You can learn that searches on car insurance are ten times more common than searches on home owner insurance. Plenty of information on relative position and popularity…

But… Don’t go thinking that this search on car insurance represents some 570,337 possible customers.

Remember, Overture showed us 6016 hits per day for the term keyword. Wordtracker is getting 15 visitors. Do the math and figure out if the 15 visitors per day is worth the cost of the keyword.

Overture’s pitch is appealing, but it’s dangerous for you to believe. As I’ve just demonstrated their numbers are not properly adjusted to be useful. What you need is the most accurate information to make the most informed possible choice about keyword selection and purchase. That’s what Wordtracker provides, accurate information about keywords.

This article was based on Demystifying The Radically Different Keyword Results Provided By Overture and Wordtracker …because your online success depends on getting accurate keyword counts!

by Robin Nobles

The blogosphere and traditional media is abuzz about new proposed legislation aimed at regulating the Internet. Specifically, it has been proposed that those company’s that provide Internet connectivity to popular web sites, such as Google, Yahoo, etc., should be allowed to charge an additional fee to allow these sites premium or uninterrupted status to end users. Today, systems exist that would that allow large Telcos and ISPs to prioritize packets sent to customers from specific URLs.

MoveOn.org has recently initiated a petition drive to both raise awareness and a political discussion designed to protect so-called “Net Neutrality”. Among is chief concerns is the notion that consumers and end-users will lose their right to freely access information unencumbered by their service provider.

Typically, we are advocates for free-market reorganization, even in the face of regulation. We expressed just such a view in a previous article about MoveOn’s efforts to stop a pay-per-email scheme introduced by Yahoo and AOL. In that case, while we are not proponents of email tariffs, we expressed that such a scheme could create a differentiation between email service providers that could ultimately be exploited by smaller, more nimble start-ups offering unencumbered email service.

In this instance, however, we believe that the general notion of information availability is at stake. Under this proposed legislation, these same ISPs could elect, for example, to prohibit access to competing service providers that were marketing unencumbered services. That is, in the first instance, the market could reasonably respond to the situation by offering a competitive service. If ISPs were free to control access or charge additional tariffs, it is feasible that they could effectively mute the efforts of competitors and stifle the market’s ability to react to the new paradigm.

The discussions surrounding this legislation have rightly focused on the effect on consumers. Of secondary importance has been the effect on small business, an issue that we would like to address here. So what could we expect, if large service providers were free to charge an additional right of way to net publishers?

• Marketers should expect to pay more at the PPC pump — If Google, Yahoo and MSN are forced to pay higher access fees to ensure speedy and reliable delivery of their packets, we should expect to see higher fees associated with pay-per-click advertising. Such a fee could come in the form of a monthly subscription fee or an upward shift in the minimum bidding for keywords (typically $0.10 today). With larger advertisers the impact would be negligible and likely change their cost structures by only a few percentage points – still competitive with other marketing channels. For small businesses who rely heavily upon the Internet’s lower advertising cost structures, the impact could be significant.
• The potential to stifle innovation — Startups and entrepreneurs with business models that are contrary to the ISPs could be unduly burdened by the tariff. For example, what would stop AT&T from slowing or blocking access to the website’s of Vonage or Packet8. At best, this would only encumber a users access to these telecom competitors. At worst, access could be prevented entirely.
• Unfair competition and fragmented commerce — With its newly acquired lever over net publishers, the ISPs would likely contract with the highest bidders to guarantee premium access. For example, Apple may be in the best position to get an exclusive for music distribution online. What effect would this have on upstarts or the music publishers. Similarly, those ISPs like AOL or Time Warner Cable with interests in content could eliminate or encumber competitors. If such a system were in place previously, the iPod/iTunes market could have been made unavailable to to the millions of AOL users. Consider the wide number of ancillary iPod products and services currently being offered by hundreds of small and medium-sized business. It is possible that much of this business would have never been created. There are countless other products and services that would have met a similar fate.
• The political voice of small business could stymied — In a media age that is already well-positioned to favor its owners, large corporations, the Internet has become the level-playing field for political discussion, including those policy issues that affect small business owners. Consider, for example, that if such legislation were passed, dissenting commentary such as this article could be subject to a fee.
• Virtual companies could become a thing of the past — The Internet has yielded numerous innovations that empower smaller, geographically-diverse organizations to grow despite their size. Previously, for a business to succeed, its key managers had to be in close proximity to one another. Services like online video conferencing, VoIP, and Instant Messaging have created sufficient communication to allow collaboration between entrepreneurs that was previously impossible. All these services could be subject to tariffs and hence higher cost structures.

So what is the common thread here? Ultimately, these tariffs will likely raise costs across the board. Less likely, but still possible, is that such legislation could result in an absolute right to exclude in addition to a right-of-way tariff. The bottom line is that these costs will be passed along to consumers and business alike. And if that’s the case, why don’t the Telcos and ISPs just say so and charge a higher fee for the end-users service?

Plainly, they cannot. They cannot because the Internet encourages competition in pricing and innovation. If higher fees were charged for regular dial-up or broadband, consumers would find an alternative. In truth, this legislation is designed to limit competition and protect the telecom industry as it continues to struggle in this Internet era.

This legislation is especially untimely, as the US continues to trail both Asia and Europe in broadband pricing, speed and penetration. Legislation like this designed to insulate the telecom incumbents, will continue to encumber this nation’s position in the global economy. If you agree, follow this link to MoveOn.org’s petition in favor of preserving net neutrality.

Are you too focused on trying to crack the code?

It’s very common for SEO’s to focus too much on trying to figure out a search engines algorithm. They believe if they can crack the algo of Google for instance their page will be get a better rank.

Maybe, maybe not. But here’s why I think this isn’t the best mindset.

1. Things change.
These algorithms are changed from time to time. They are maintained and managed by humans who will flip a switch eventually and your crack will no longer be effective. You’re chasing smoke.

2. Search Engines aren’t your customers.
They aren’t going to buy your products. Write your pages and content for the people whom you serve. People whom you want for customers.

3. Google has some number of factors that influence a sites rank, people usually think it’s around 100. Spending a huge amount of time cracking the Algorithm is to focus on only one or two of a hundred factors. It’s like going on a blind date, spending two hours picking out a pair of shoes meanwhile you have spinach in your teeth.

Take a different tack.

Isn’t the real goal to achieve top rankings that remain high and translate into business and customers?

Don’t lose the forest for the trees. If traffic doesn’t turn into sales then what is the point? You’re kissing your sister. You’ve spent all your time and energy making sure Google’s algorithms like your site, and your users needs haven’t been properly addressed.

5 ways to Achieve Top rankings without Chasing Algorithms.

1. Stop focusing on the Search engines. They aren’t your audience. Write for your audience. In the longer term this will add value to your site that will translate to indelible traffic.

2. Remember the basics. Always use your main keyword phrase in your title tag. Use META description and keyword tags, link text, heading tags, and the like.

3. Each page should have it’s own unique tags and be focused on a keyword. One per page.

4. Write your content well. Content and Context are crucial. Keep it new. Keep it coming. Always remember to be mindful of your keyword phrase, synonyms, related words and surrounding text. Try using ThemeMaster if you need help with this. It’s a great program.

5. On Page and Off page factors are important. Focusing on one at the expense of the other will end up hurting you. Find the balance. On-page factors to consider are your tags, body text, prominence, relevance, and the like. Off-page factors include link popularity and link reputation (what those inbound links “say” about your Web page when they link to you).

Is search engine research important? Yes. It’s critical.
By way of an example: Earlier this year pages began falling in Gooogle’s ranking and SEO’s everywhere were trying to figure out how to preserve their hard won rankings.

Doing our research, we learned that it was a compliancy issue. With a pretty simple solution.
Make sure you use a DOCTYPE tag and an ISO statement at the top of every Web page.

For example:
If you didn’t know about this compliancy issue you could have waste a lot of time trying to chase the algorithms and end up doing more harm than good.

Keep doing your research and stay current on the search industry.

In conclusion.

If you spend 100 hours cracking the Google’s algorithm that may translate into x number of visitors per day. In those same 100 hours you could have written unique, high quality content for many sites that generates more overall traffic. Put people above search engines and you’ll increase your traffic.

This article was based on Chasing the Search Engines’ Algorithms. . . Should you or shouldn’t you? By Robin Nobles