| How's that list coming along? You wll recall in the first | | | | so Google searches for exactly what we want. If you |
| part of this series I covered getting a list together of | | | | put in dog breeds, Google returns 5,59o,000 results. |
| ideas for your site or blog niche. Hopefully you have a | | | | Look in the upper right-hand corner for this number. |
| good sized list of general categories. The next steps | | | | Ever heard of Sumantra Roy? Probably not. He's a |
| involve narrowing the keywords and then doing some | | | | man who specializes in SEO and particular keyword |
| supply and demand research. | | | | research. He has invented a formula called the |
| There are many keyword tools out there. I like to use | | | | Keyword Effectiveness Index or KEI to measure the |
| Overture's because it's free and easy. Keep in mind | | | | potential of a keyword. I use a simpler version of it. |
| that the numbers from Overture are usually inflated -- | | | | Here it is: |
| sometimes a little sometimes a lot. They fudge the | | | | KEI = Demand / Supply |
| numbers by counting like queries -- fly and flies or | | | | That is - Demand divided by Supply. The higher the |
| affiliate and affiliates get counted as the same query. | | | | KEI the better. This gives you a simplified KEI that |
| Remember -- they make more money convincing their | | | | ranges from 1-10. People compare this to the Richter |
| prospective advertisers that a search term is popular. | | | | Scale, meaning that each successive number is |
| So plug in one of the general search terms from your | | | | exponentially better than the last number. |
| list. I'm going to try dogs. Here are the results: | | | | In our example above, the KEI for dog breed would be |
| Searches done in February 2006 | | | | .04, which isn't that great. |
| Count Search Term | | | | Dog Training Basics yields 45,600 results for Google. |
| 1104234 dog | | | | The KEI would be 4, which is terrific. Hmm...wait a |
| 225786 dog breed | | | | minute. That concludes our lesson. Bye. [Sound of |
| 183180 dog training basics | | | | running down the hallway and door slamming]. A little |
| 152056 dog show | | | | nerd humor there. |
| 139072 dog breeders | | | | Do a few more and see what you come up with. I did |
| 98321 dog name | | | | dog name and got a KEI of .10, which is lousy. I also |
| 97021 dog training | | | | tried dog gift, which got me a KEI of .07. |
| 91172 dog picture | | | | I usually pick up the highest KEI keywords and plug |
| 88480 dog for sale | | | | them back into the Overture tool and try it again. |
| 62657 dog grooming | | | | Incidentally, Wordtracker does this all for you. Try it for |
| 56907 dog gift | | | | free and see how easy it is. Just keep in mind that |
| I edited a few like snoop dog out for expediency. I like | | | | they use different sources for both supply and |
| dog breeds and dog training [basics]. Looks like people | | | | demand than my example above, but that shouldn't |
| are searching for both quite a bit. Now that we have | | | | make too much of a difference. |
| the demand, let's go over to Google and check the | | | | So now we should have a much smaller list that has |
| supply. | | | | some good prospects on it. Next we'll cover the real |
| Type in the exact search term, putting quotes around it | | | | research. |