Keyword Research
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on July 28, 2010
Okay, I don’t really know what you’re thinking, but I have a pretty good idea what you want to know. That’s because of a cool little WordPress plug-in I’ve installed on this blog called Psychic Search.
About Psychic Search
The Psychic Search plug-in is great because it quickly and easily allows me to see what people searched for when they found this website, what search engine they came from, and what they are searching for once they get here.
I know, you can already figure out that with Google Analytics or some other analytics software. However, this plug-in puts that information right into the admin area of your WordPress blog and formats it so it is so much quicker and easier to read.
Psychic Search is another great tool to add to your keyword research arsenal.
A Few Great Reasons to Use Psychic Search
- Discover which search terms are giving you the most traffic
- Know what search terms are coming from which search engines
- See what people are searching for when they get to your blog
- Give your readers what they want
- Come up with new blog post titles
- Figuring out what content to add to your website
I’ve only touched on a few possible reasons to use Psychic Search, but there are many.
Right now you can download the Psychic Search plugin for free. It takes less than a minute to install and set-up, literally. Yet another great plugin from MaxBlogPress.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on December 24, 2009
Today’s post is a holiday themed one. Looks like the WordPress template I’m using has the right colors for Christmas time.
I always find it really interesting and particularly useful to see what people are searching around the major holidays. So what exactly are people searching for this Christmas Eve?
Google Trends makes it easy for us to see the latest hot topics and search trends.
Hot topics are those things being discussed in the news, social media and such. Hot searches are just that, the fasted rising search queries.
Looks like health care reform is today’s hottest topic, and I’m sad to say the death of famous sportscaster George Michael is the hottest search trend.
Also, apparently you can track Santa, and that’s what people are looking to do. But why wouldn’t they. 
Anyway, that’s about all I have for today. Best wishes, and happy holidays!
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on August 18, 2009
One of the first places to start when doing SEO on your website is keyword research. Each page of your website should be optimized for 1-3 keywords or key phrases. So it’s a good idea to do a little keyword research before you work on optimizing each page of your website.
The keyword selection process can be very tedious, complex, and time consuming; especially on very large web sites.
So while there are tons of keyword tools available on the web, to keep it simple, I’ll list a few of the free, simple-to-use ones available.
Here are some simple free keyword research tools:
- External Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Find keywords based on your site content, identify negative keywords, find synonyms – or not, and specify a language and location. (Start with broad keywords like “cell phones”, then try more specific keywords like “Motorola cell phones”.
- External Google AdWords Traffic Estimator – used primarily for Google AdWords, but allows you to get an idea of how much traffic you would be getting if you ranked high for specific key phrases, and what people are bidding on those keywords.
- Free Keyword Suggestion Tool – Allows you to view the daily search volume for up to 100 keywords/phrases.
- Compete.com – Gives you an idea what keywords and web sites are driving traffic to your competitors, and compare your competitor websites to one another.
Once you’ve determined what keywords to optimize each page for, you can then start optimizing each page.
