Targeting keywords and making sense of inventory results with EUclix.com

There's little point in optimising pages or acquiring links targeted towards searches that are never being performed. For that reason one of the most frequently consulted tools used may well be the Overture Inventory Search Tool. The results, however, aren't necessarily all worth monitoring.

For illustration we'll be using recorded searches for internet traffic in our example

Raw reults follow. Some will need to be rejected immediately. Key to colour coding for those initially discarded is at the end of the raw results. Overture Recorded Searches, Oct 2006, for internet traffic from http://inventory.overture.com

The aim is to get rid of any results that we know are associated with genuine brand searches, searches that have the same word(s) repeated, just duplicating another result and finally filtering out requests that deliberately or accidentally poison the results. One person with a piece of SEO software checking a keyphrase search once a day does not make 30 individual visitors per month. Deliberately injected results can usually be identified as they promote a URL where other traffic metrics would suggest a far lower or even no brand awareness to support a claim that such numbers are searching for them. Accidentally can be even trickier to identify and as a consequence can be a very arbitrary area. It only takes a few people running automated searches on a niche phrase for them to begin confusing each other, courrupting the figures and chasing only imaginary potential traffic.

This filtering now renders the list so, ready for further refining at your own editorial discretion

After the Editorial discretion filter the list is so

After the Editorial filter and removal of all but three word keyphrases, the most compact list is so

A successful marketing strategy may be wise to focus on searches from this last, most compact and reliable list, and consideration of any searches in lists further above can develop later. In this way you will be covering both high volume and 'longtail' results from the first stages of site development, whilst bringing suitable and appropriately targeted traffic. Don't forget to check the results regularly as search volumes may vary dramatically from month to month and try to identify trends that can be capitalised on. Once a site is underway and is attracting genuine traffic, the server logs will be able to identify popular pages, search phrases already bringing traffic to your site and areas that can still attract more. Capitalise on searches bringing visitors in, add related content and refine further according to placements in the main three SE's results pages. Develop further content for searches that are still not bringing an approporiate number of visitors in. Remember that Overture.com results are only a raw general indicator and in no way represnt the total or a true cross section of internet users. Available traffic will be far greater. When you've hit #1 at the big 3 SEs you should be laughing, but that's when the job of holding onto that position begins!

Last Updated 20.Dec.2006