How Keywords Reveal What People are REALLY Searching For

What’s the first basic skill anyone working in SEO learns how to perform? 

Chances are, it’s doing keyword research and finding out what people are searching for with respect to whatever website that SEO’er is optimizing. 

Is it a website about dog products? 

Well, are people searching for ‘dog beds’ or ‘dog pillows’?  What has a higher search volume month over month, ‘dog products’ or ‘dog supplies’?  The answers provide the base from which to begin the SEO process for that particular site. 

Having been in SEO for a while though, I’ve also learned a few unexpected things along the way from my keyword research.  I’ve been able to see what interests people online and to see what they look for when they think no one is looking.  

For example, I was doing keyword research for a clothing company and looked up “women’s skirts”.   The answers were not exactly what I expected, with “up skirt” getting 65,000 searches per year followed by “short skirt” with 28,522. It’s interesting because although you always hear how everyone uses the Internet for porn, seeing the search results pointing to that effect really drives the point home. 

We also really like to use the Internet to learn about the opposite sex as well. While researching for a dating site, I saw the many searches for “how to attract men”, “flirting tips” and “how to impress women”.    So many people search for keywords around losing weight too, probably to appear more attractive to the opposite sex. 

Although Google and most search engines record the keywords people type into the search box, I don’t think the majority of people think about that when surfing the net.  At least personally, I tend to think of myself being the only one who sees the results of what I’m looking for. 

I feel completely safe typing in whatever I want to see, and don’t have that filter of being embarrassed or having to be politically correct or sounding stupid that I might have if actually having a conversation with another person about that same topic.  Therefore, I tend to think that the large numbers of people looking for information about the opposite sex, or just sex itself, is fascinating. 

It shows that those subjects are first and foremost on our minds.  That’s what really matters to us.  That’s what we care about, our relationships and interactions with people.   The something which we’ve cared about since the beginning of time.    Perhaps even as quickly as technology changes and things advance by the minute in our world, we can count on certain things staying the same. 

Some things never change I guess. 

By: Brooke Betts 

Your Web Site Is a Loser, So Why Don’t You Kill It?

The Biggest Loser is a coveted title when it comes to the battle of the bulge, not so much when it describes your Web site.How do you know if your site is a loser?For many it’s not that obvious that the site they call their own is not making the cut. It can sometimes be hard to see past your hard work of getting the site up to an honest evaluation. So what defines a Web site loser on the internet? Ideally, a site should:

• Generate relevant traffic
• Get viewers to click-through
• Get users to convert to some sort of action

Well, now you know what to look for. So basically your site should get people there, keep them interested and take desired action. But how can you validate the factors mentioned above? A simple to use tool for validating your current status is www.alexa.com.With Alexa you can measure your current ranking and measure the page views of each visitor. The higher the number (ranking), the worse your site is doing. So a 410,000 Alexa ranking is not great. The page view data is a useful tool for seeing how effective the click-through techniques are on your site. The more page views per visitor the better.One final simple but important tool is the Google page rank tool, google.com/webmasters/tools. It is also available as part of the Google tool bar. A page rank of two is not a good page rank, whereas a page rank of six or seven is fantastic.Leverage the tools mentioned above to determine whether your website is a loser or not.