A good insight for begginners or ammatures, but I felt it was lacking certain, important aspects.

As far as pure research goes, competition of the keywords was not covered at all.
the examples stated may have a high number of overture searches, but they also have huge competition.

the overture keyword suggestion tool has it's uses as an indicator, but should not be taken literally, as we all know the results are skewed.

There's no mention of the google keyword suggestion tool, https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal , that does give a search volume indication

There's no mention of using your original keywords to aid semantics

LSI and topic based phrasing isn't covered either

Northie,
As an amateur, I much appreciate the heads up that the article was beneficial. It seems lately that there are more then usual questionable articles to read, (I was getting used to not questioning what I was reading! LOL) and after having two conflicting articles in one issue, I've become more hesitant to trust the writers. I am an amateur and will always be one, so I'm gullible enough to now need an expert to tell me if the article is true or useful. Thank you. (Considering the statistics I learned about message board responses on this message board a few weeks ago, you've probably help plenty more besides just me, too.)

Knowing that this article is helpful, (although could have been more helpful) I'm also glad you added what else it could have included. Thanks also for the Google tool link. Ummm, got a question for ya, what's LSI? (I tried looking it up in Google, but the choices were so vast, I was still lost.)

At least your lists of other ideas that should have been included, finally gave me a sense that I am getting some knowledge in-grained into me -- I actually understood the rest of the ideas you suggested! Yippee!!! Amateur status still there, but I'm finally past complete noob stage. Maybe advanced noob, but, hey, some times I wonder if I'll ever understand any technology created after 1980. LOL

Thanks for the review of the article. I'm feeling more trusting again!

Firstly I would like to appologise if anyone felt patronised by my post (I've been very patronising lately, I'm afraid).

To pick up on a couple of issues from atwhatcost has asked -

LSI - latent semantic indexing. thegyspsy has written a good post on it, and there's a good SR article on it as well.

LSI
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/ … Is-It.html

think this is one of Dave's
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/ … ation.html

being able to trust writers - this is where anyone who studied history at university has an advantage. remember when you asked them "Why are you studying history? what job can you do with that?". Less about the jobs (I studied physics, now look at me!) and look more at the skills - Historians have it drilled in to them not to trust anything and to uncover the reason why the information was written, rather than take the 'facts' straight from the text. Here, the reason for writing an article is usually to get a relevant link back to your company/website; or to gain some credibility in a chosen discipline.

If you are trying to learn the ropes on anything new, no matter what it is, remember to always listen to both sides of any conflicting information you hear. Being able to take in both sides and make up your own mind will mean that you can later apply both sets of knowledge  - or your own deduced knowledge -if a certain situation arises.

remembering different points of view will allow you to make an informed choice when more information comes along.

For example, most people (maybe everyone) participating in these forums practices white hat techniques. However, black hat techniques (come on, they're only labels!) can be profitable for those who want to follow that path. Most of us would dismiss the advice out of hand, but it may be useful for some......

I must admit I don't read articles any more - because os Northie points out, most are purely for backlinks or self promotion.....and often the info is soooo repetitive of what is out there already (talk about duplicate content!!  - but just reworded/repackaged) as to become mundane.

This article was very much in that mould...just how many seo keyword articles can be useful??

Yeah... i havent been doing this to long either, i never was keen on the article thing but i read away because i wanted to get my way into this seemingly complex world of seo, now after 4 months i dont read em either, i read tutorials on languages and take advice from here and there. There is only so much you can read about keywords, gypsy and wiz broke me in on keywords when i first started posting here. (where is wiz nowadays?) Anyway, to much of one topic in a short period of time will kill it, i could probably write a valuable article at this point in time but it will only be a compilation of articles have already read.

I think there should be a revision period, they should only allow a new article on one topic every 3 or four months after something different has actually happend.

quality over quantity

i'll drink to that

matte wrote:

I must admit I don't read articles any more - because os Northie points out, most are purely for backlinks or self promotion.....and often the info is soooo repetitive of what is out there already (talk about duplicate content!!  - but just reworded/repackaged) as to become mundane.  Just how many seo keyword articles can be useful??

Exactly my reason(s) for no longer reading articles!

Ok, not to be redundant, but I started a KW/Phrase research ARTICLE (lol) last week, just never got back to it..

One problem commonly found is measuring the true competition for a term. I ran into a discussion along these lines on another board and 2 folks I know already wrote pieces on this (Phil Craven being one of them).

For those of you familiar with the KEI (keyword effectiveness index) model, keep in mind the ‘competition’ numbers are simply the complete results from Google. This is what can skew the process. It is really a measurement of all ‘instances’ of a term on the web, not really competition. Thus I am not a fan of many KEI calculators.

So I will show 4 ways of looking at a term that will start to paint a broader picture of the true competition of a term.

Term; Internet Marketing Articles (from SR home page meta)

Total results;  122,000,000
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=n … +Articles+

With Quotations; 320 000
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … rticles%22

allintitle operator; 44 600
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … g+Articles

allinurl operator; 32 500
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … g+Articles


Now a secondary Phrase –

Term; Web Marketing Articles

Total Results; 206 000 000
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … g+Articles

Quotations ; 57 600
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … rticles%22

allintitle operator;  20 600
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … g+Articles

allinurl operator; 775
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en& … g+Articles


So if you look at the TOTAL R$ESULTS it seems that ‘web marketing articles’ has more competition. Once we start to look closer though as to how much SEO work is being done on the terms, this term shows to be LESS competitive.

So, it shows how the numbers used in most competitive analysis systems is skewed. While not perfect, the gang at NicheBot listened to it’s users (me being one of them eh) and has incorporated deeper calculations as such.

Anyway, the main point is to see how TOTAL results can be misleading as a ‘competition’ number and that KEI calculations can also be skewed depending on the source numbers

There’s my 2c on KW research for today… you’ll have to wait for the ‘Article’.. I promise not to make it redundant :0)

thegyspsy wrote:

I know already wrote pieces on this (Phil Craven being one of them).

You were doing great, until you mentioned that arrogant; egotistical name.

ha ha ha ha.. I take it yer not a fan o PC...lol

I don't mind him, doesn't give me any of the arrogant crap... so we're cool. Not a close friend or anything, just chat with him from time to time.

He's smarter than most SEOs I know :0) ---

you know in the western movies... when a guys says he dont like the other guys shoes.... so the other guy stands on his foot... etc etc....  i will be leaving this soon to be bar fight... J/K i will still be watching Go get PC TA... get em !! he he he

For me, competition is based on the following

total number of results in google for keyphrase in question
total number of backlinks to the top 10 in google, as reported by MSN
the number of times each of the words, in the keyphrase, appears in the domain, url and title tags of the top 10 results in google.

I do a little weighting based on experience and end up with a number. Knowing what to look for I now have top 30 placements for 90% of the pages I have indexed
(~500 pages indexed out of 1000 pages - both numbers growing as new pages are added).
Of that 90%:
~50% are top 10,
~15% top 5
~5% #1

thegyspsy wrote:

ha ha ha ha.. I take it yer not a fan o PC...lol

I don't mind him, doesn't give me any of the arrogant crap... so we're cool. Not a close friend or anything, just chat with him from time to time.

He's smarter than most SEOs I know :0) ---

Let's suffice it to say, PC and I have had "words" in the past -- guess that's why he banned me from his Forum... ... he knows alot, but quite a bit of his stuff I disagreed with and gave him proof to back up what I said -- pissed him off, as he doesn't like his knowledge to be challenged.

Who's PC?

I googled him and found an SEO bloke based in Bradford, Yorkshire, UK - one and the same?

(of web workshop fame???)

Northie -- yes; that's the one and the same ... but digging further, PC is Phil Craven who has 2 Forums going ... his original was where he teamed up with a Colombian woman named "Janeth" and she's got the same attitude as Phil; rather arrogant, so this is their first forum and this is another of Phil's Forums ... you'll find, if you dig deep enough, one of the poster's here has a few posts on one of those forums and it seems he was locked out ... maybe it was from spamming the forum with info about "california shirts"...

mmmmmmm, I'll look out for him, bradford is only about 30 miles from me

looks a bit cliquey doesn't seem to look all that friendly - free speach seems to be shot down.

I'll spend a bit more time looking round and posting, see what commensta re made back.....

It's wierd TA... I haven't had any run ins with him... and I can be an ass.... so you'd figure I would? he he

You crank this week or what man...?

thegyspsy wrote:

It's wierd TA... I haven't had any run ins with him... and I can be an ass.... so you'd figure I would? he he

You crank this week or what man...?

LOL -- you used to be an ass... ... what; me cranky this week?  Nah; just pointing out a few things in my usual way...

travelagent wrote:

thegyspsy wrote:

It's wierd TA... I haven't had any run ins with him... and I can be an ass.... so you'd figure I would? he he

You crank this week or what man...?

LOL -- you used to be an ass... ... what; me cranky this week?  Nah; just pointing out a few things in my usual way...

Just for the record I still CAN be... a talent like that never goes away... almost mandatory in my position ... my wife does all the 'nice' stuff and I get all the dirty work (problem clients, firing staff, vendor problems yada yada... need thick skin)