SEO Tycoon

**bj_private** · 12-29-2006, 04:34 AM

Hi Guys,

I was depending on Overture keyword service for sometime now and I learned recently about the Wordtracker service. What I'm trying to do is to find out which is more precise so I tried to check the term "BWW E36" on both and I came with these 2 different results:

Overture: 3249
WordTracker: 63

As you can see from the above, the results are too far. If the correct result is Overture's then I would like to optimize for this word, but if WordTracker's is the correct result, I will just ignore this term. What do you think? Is there a better way to determine who's the correct one ?

**bj_private** · 12-29-2006, 05:02 AM

I've just found that 63 is per day

not per month as I thought, so it's around 1890.

**vangogh** · 12-29-2006, 02:17 PM

Both use different databases so the results generally aren't going to be inline with each other. In fact you never really want to trust the actual numbers on either or any other keyword research tool.

The way to use them is to compare one term to another and see which would likely get more traffic. You can compare different terms within one database and see that one gets searched more often less often than the other, but don't expect the terms to get the specific traffic that any database says it gets.

Also you really can't compare the numbers across the different result sets since they use different databases and keep track of things differently.

As an example of the way they look at keywords differently, Overture would see:

dog
dogs

as the same keyword. WordTracker would see them as two distinct keywords.

WordTracker values are generally considered cleaner though, meaning they are more likely to be accurate. Still don't trust the actual numbers. Look at them more in relation to other numbers in a more or less comparison.

**ADAM Web Design** · 12-29-2006, 03:35 PM

Back in the day, WordTracker tended to be more accurate. The problem is that, over the course of time, people have become more and more sophisticated in their searches and much of the data reflected by the sample sizes in WordTracker and Overture do not reflect a number of the longtail searches and other keyphrases that people type in.

If you have an existing site with site stats, take a look at some of the keyphrases you're found under. Then, compare those to the results provided by WordTracker and Overture. You will often find that your users find you under things neither tracking tool has recorded any searches for.

Only one of my top five referring search phrases for the one site shows up in Overture, one shows up with WordTracker, and none of them show up in both.

It's not a bad idea to target a phrase that has high search volumes recorded in Overture and WordTracker, but don't treat it as the be-all and end-all either. There are lots of perfectly good 2-word and 3-word phrases out there that people will find you under if you design your site properly.

**bj_private** · 12-31-2006, 05:04 AM

Well, first of all, thanks for the reply guys. From what you've said, I take it that you shouldn't depend *totally* on web tools to determine the keywords that you're targetting.

In the past 2 days, I figured another way to estimate possible traffic for a specific keyword. It's by using G Adwords. If you have a Adwords account, you simply can add a new "Ad" for a specific keyword and see if you get acceptable number of impressions for it. If yes, this means that this keyword is a good one for building your optimization around. If not, then go and try another keyword.

What do you think? How you guy select your keywords. I've made some selections before and they all failed so, now I'm being cautious with this very much.

**ADAM Web Design** · 12-31-2006, 03:19 PM

How do I do it? As stupid and strange is this sounds, I don't do it all that much.

The reason is because there are so many people using so many different queries that it would be much easier and more beneficial to pick up 100 longtail queries than a shorttail query.

Having said that, I pick a word (or two-word term) that I know will have searches and optimize for that term. My goal isn't necessarily to get that term (although it'd be nice if I did)...it's to get terms related to that term.

For example, I use SEO as a keyword for one site, but my primary goal isn't to get SEO. It's to get SEO + (terms user searches for). And it works very, very well for me.

You're right...don't depend * totally * on tools. For the most part, tools have flaws that one could drive a truck through.

**vangogh** · 12-31-2006, 04:10 PM

Tony you're right that you shouldn't depend totally on the tools. Their are plenty of useful tools and I think Overture and WordTracker are two for keyword research. You have to know what you're getting with them though. The more you understand where a tool gets its results, the better you can judge what to do with those results.

I mostly use a variety of free keyword tools and like Adam am looking to get longer phrases around the main term. It also depends on the page in question. For example on my blog I just write the post I want and try not to worry too much about keywords. I do know what I'm writing about and know what keywords the page might rank well for so I'll add those to the page title and headings and naturally use the term while writing. I'm not trying to stuff extra keywords in the writing, but I do use them when appropriate.

The pages then end up ranking for many different terms around the main keyword. I'll stick with Adam's example of 'seo' as a keyword. It will be difficult to rank well for it right away since there's a lot of competition for the term. But if you add some modifiers around it you might have a better chance of ranking so maybe:

organic seo
organic seo services
professional organic seo services

I'm not sure those are necessarily the terms you want to target, but I'm sure you get the idea.

I think the idea of using AdWords or any PPC is a good way to research keywords and see what does and doesn't work. In the end we want keywords that lead to conversions. Using PPC you can test which keywords actually lead to a sale or a lead and then you know those are the ones to target.

**bj_private** · 01-01-2007, 06:38 AM

I think I understand. Thank you guys for the reply and Happy new year to you

**vangogh** · 01-01-2007, 11:29 PM

Glad to help. Happy New Year to you as well.

**ADAM Web Design** · 01-02-2007, 12:41 AM

If you're really grateful for our advice, you can send us each an E36. I just need a little one, though. I don't have a wife or kids, just a girlfriend.

**vangogh** · 01-02-2007, 05:35 PM

I want in on that E36 as well. Who knew helping people would have such great rewards.

**bj_private** · 01-03-2007, 07:53 AM

I've just bought my car and I'm broken. When I receive my adsense payment (next month), I will buy one for each of you guys LOOOL!

**TimuM** · 07-27-2007, 08:16 PM

They mostly have very close results.. I use both of them ..I also get some idea from Google...

Thanks
Timu