Newsletter54
EzSEO Newsletter # 54
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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Hi again
This week:
1. Wordtracker Part IV
2. Mozilla Thunderbird
3. SEO Website Builder - 1 year on.
4. RSS feeds.
5. Google Zeitgeist
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1. Wordtracker Part IV
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Last week we used Keyword Universe to build a list of over 4000 keywords in around 2 minutes. Following that, we went through the time-consuming competition analysis at Wordtracker, e-mailed the results to ourselves and then imported the keywords into KRA-WT
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/kra
KRA-WT ran its Niche within a Niche feature and found over 1000 sub-niches on our topic of baseball. After looking through these mini-niche reports, I discarded those that I thought were not relevant, or good enough, and ended up with about 700 sub-niches. Each sub-niche could be used to build a great web page around. Since all words in the sub-niche are related, I can easily choose one primary keyword and several secondary keywords to write my page about. We have talked about that in previous newsletters, so I wont go there today.
So, last week, in the space of a few hours (including going through my sub-niche reports), I pretty much planned out a new site on Baseball that could easily span 700 pages. Who said keyword research was difficult? And that was a topic I know nothing about.
OK, today I want to cover a potentially great feature of Wordtracker - the ability to find misspellings. In this section, Wordtracker attempts to find out how many different ways people spell, and misspell your target phrase.
Misspellings are great to target in your PPC advertising, but also in your web pages aimed at free search engine listing.
One of the most common questions I get asked on this topic is "How do you use misspelt words on your web page?". What concerns most people is that their web page does not look amateurish with words misspelt all over the place. At the same time, they want to rank high for the misspelt phrase to get traffic to their site.
There is no definitive answer to this question, it is more or a compromise. To be found for a phrase, it must appear on your page (not totally true, but no time to explain here). That means having a misspelt word in plain view of your visitors. One way I have seen to make it look better is for the webmaster to include a list of misspelled words at the bottom of the page, e.g.
"Depression is often misspelled as: depressiom, depresiom, deplessiom, deplesiom, dpression, deression, depession, deprssion, depresson, depressin, depretion, deplestion, depresion, depletion, deplession, deplesion, depresshun, depreshun, deplesshun, depleshun, deprestion, d3pr3s1on, d3pr3s1om, depres1on, depressino, depressoin, depresison, deprsesion, deperssion, derpession, dperession, edpression"
I would warn against this technique because listing keywords in this manner could be classed as spam and cause your site some problems. It would certainly make me feel uneasy, and as I always tell you, any tecnique that makes you feel uneasy is probably best avoided.
In my opinion, it is much better to put the misspelled keyword in plain view on your page and hope your visitor does not mind too much. Since most misspelled words will have relatively little competition, it is quite possible that you will rank well with only one occurrence of the keyword on your page.
Try to put the phrase as high up the page as possible, and don't forget that you do have ALT tags to play with. I don't suggest over use (or abuse) of keywords in ALT tags, but certainly putting a phrase once in an ALT tag wont hurt.
OK, back to Wordtracker.
The way Wordtracker handles misspellings is not necessarily the best way, but it can provide some great untapped phrases. Let's see what I mean:
Login to Wordtracker.
At the main menu, in section 5. Multiple Search, the last item in the list is called "Misspelling Search". Click on it.
You are taken to a screen that allows you to type in your "base" or "root" word.
Do it.
Type in baseball and click Proceed to step 2.
In step 2 you will see a drop down box that currently shows "base*all", and next to it 88%.
If you click on the drop down box, you will see alternatives such as:
baseb*ll (88%)
bas*ll (63%)
base*l (63%)
etc
Wordtracker is prompting you to select one of these "masks".
What it will then do is search its database for phrases that match your chosen mask.
To explain what I mean by mask, let's take base*all for example.
This mask tells Wordtracker that it can find any word that begins with "base" and ends in "all". The * can be any character or characters.
Click the "Find Me Misspellings" button.
The phrases that appear are probably not what you would of expected at all.
Here are the first few:
baseketball (* has been replaced with "ketb")
base ball (* has been replaced by " b")
basement walls (* has been replaced by "ment w")
baseballcards
baseballbats
constructing concrete basement walls
painting basement walls
specifications concrete basement walls
oil base drywall primer
basement wall systems
basement wall suggestions
base ball bats
If you look at the complete list in Wordtracker, you can see that a lot of these phrases are not related to our chosen niche topic of baseball. Words like "basement" can be excluded from this search by including them in the list of exclude words (next to the box where you enter your base phrase).
By looking down the list of returned words, and adding those that have nothing to do with baseball to the exclusion list, e.g. basement and BASEketball, we can do the search again and get a much cleaner list of phrases. Of the 100 found, I imported them into KRA-WT and 44 have less than 10 competing pages in Google. 33 of those phrases have 1 or less competing pages. Almost guaranteed #1.
But Wordtracker is missing something here.
To find "misspellings", you have to do a lot of work.
I typed the word baseball into my text editor 10 times as quickly as I could. 2 out of 10 were misspelled as
"basebasll". Now if this was a common misspelling, it would be found in Wordtracker using the baseb*ll misspelling (and it was in three phrases). But think of all the combinations of mis-typed spelling errors like this. To find them all in Wordtracker you would have to use all the masks in turn and then wade through a lot of irrelevant keywords, . Surely there must be a better way.
Well, have a look at this tool:
http://www.searchspell.com/typo/
It wont cost you a cent, and gives me just what I want - common misspellings of the word I choose.
For baseball I get:
basebll
baseall
basball
baeball
bseball
basebal
basebar
basebarl
basebawl
bahseball
bahsebarl
bahsebawl
bahsebal
bas3ba1
baseba1
baseblal
baseabll
basbeall
baesball
bsaeball
abseball
It doesn't include my own typo basebasll, but it is a good starting point for Wordtracker research.
From the main Home screen in Wordtracker, click on the "Comprehensive Search" link in section "5. Multiple search".
Paste these phrases into Wordtracker and add another line to the list:
-baseball
This will exclude phrases containing the word baseball which might otherwise be included from the stemming of the misspelling "basebal" (now that is a cool thing to know, eh?)
Select 500 from the drop down box and click proceed.
232 phrases using these misspellings were found in Wordtracker's database. These phrases are all related to my niche of baseball, and therefore I don't need to sort through them as I did with Wordtracker's misspelling tool. On top of that, I can do the search without messng around with masks, and in only one step!
After doing the competition search and e-mailing myself the results, I find that of those 232 phrases:
175 of the phrases have 0 competing pages in Google. How high do you think you could rank for those?
Now, the issue with misspellings is that they don't bring in much traffic. Those 175 phrases would probably bring you in around 200 visitors a day from Google (as reported by KRA-WT).
Is it worth building a page for each one? Probably not, but slip these phrases into the pages you are building for your mega-baseball site (from the other 4000 keywords we found last week), and you can get an extra 200 visitors a day for no extra work. Now that IS worth the effort.
Whatever way you decide to use misspellings, they can be a valuable source of traffic. I hope I have shown you at least one way that can add visitors to your web site.
Next week we will continue looking at ways to mine pure gold from Wordtracker.
If you have not bought a subscription to Wordtracker, you really should. A day will only cost you around $8 and you can easily find enough keywords to keep you busy for months. Subscribe to wordtracker today:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/wt
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2. Mozilla Thunderbird
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In an increasingly difficult struggle to battle spam, I downloaded a f.r.e.e. e-mail program called Mozilla Thunderbird.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
This software has an intelligent spam filter that you can train, and in my initial testing, this software has really impressed me. If you are still using Outlook Express, consider moving over to Thunderbird - you can import your settings and e-mails, and have both running on your system at the same time, so you wont lose anything. What you gain, is less spam, and less risk of security problems that have plagued Microsoft.
I have been a long-time supporter of Incredimail:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/incredimail
Incredimail also has a spam filter but not as technically proficient as the one in Thunderbird. A big thumbs up to the Mozilla team!
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3. SEO Website Builder - 1 year on.
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Today I read Phil Wiley's newsletter in which he stated that he used SEO WSB for his minisites - thanks Phil.
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/seo-wsb
More importantly I realised that SEO WSB was one year old this month.
So, how is it holding up to the changes at the search engines?
Does SEO WSB still work?
I got an e-mail the other day from the merchant I represent at my test site (it is a site selling tarps). He had received a quotation request from a minor league baseball team for a tarpaulin after someone at the club found my website at Google for "baseball tarps" (my site enjoys #1 at Google for that term). The amount of commission on the sale, if it goes through, will be 8% of between $5000 - $6100. Fingers crossed!
Bear in mind I have done nothing to this site for over a year (except change the template a few times), and I still have the same number of links pointing to the site that I had 12 months ago..
Well, one year ago, the initial rankings for my test site were excellent (as you can read about on my sales page), but what has happened in a year?
Well, as might be expected it has been a roller-coaster of changes in both Google's algorithm and my own rankings over the last year. However, I am still more than happy with the results my test site (built using only SEO WSB).
Today, 7th November 2004, out of 18 phrases targeted on the site:
5 are still at #1
13 are in the top 10
Only 4 are not in the top 30 (this jumps between 2 and 4)
With such famous supporters of SEO WSB as Phil Wiley and Mininet guru Michael Campbell, SEO WSB really is a tool that works.
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/seo-wsb
If you want to get into affiliate marketing to make some extra money, but don't know where to start, why not try SEO Website Builder. It is more than software, it is a complete blueprint for success.
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4. RSS feeds
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Do you know what RSS feed are, and how they can help your website? I am reading a new book on the subject by Adrian Ling. It is not yet available for sale, but should be sometime soon.
Adrian told me that his RSS ebook is geared towards "RSS newbies" - online marketers who have heard of RSS, but don't know enough to get started.
"It's designed to help them jump in as quick as possible
with minimal fuss", said Adrian.
If you want to use RSS feeds and don't know where to start, Adrian's book is definitely for you. Not only does he talk about the usual commercial software for getting the RSS feeds published on your sites, he also mentions a f.r.e.e. alternative and provide instructions for getting that setup.
Don't be surprised if I send you a mid-week announcement about this eBook with a full review. I am very excited about it, and so should you be!
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5. Google Zeitgeist
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In newsletter #52 (sent on 25th October), I mentioned the importance of doing your research at the right time of the year, since Wordtracker's database only contains phrases searched for in the last 2 months. Remember I mentioned the example of Halloween? Well, to look at trends, I highly recommend this site as a way to spot them.
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
That's it for another issue. hope you enjoyed it. Next week, we continue with our Wordtracker series.
Bye for now.
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Visit the subscriber Bonus page for free reports and other subscriber-only offers:
http://www.ez-search-engine-optimization.com/nls
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. Also if you have any tips of your own, questions or comments, please send then to me at webmaster@ez-search-engine-optimization.com. Any tips or questions & answers I print in this newsletter will also be put up on the web version of the newsletter with a link to your site
if you want it. That's extra free traffic for your site as well as an incoming link to your site.
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