Don’t Blacklist, Use A Whitelist Instead
Don’t Blacklist, Use A Whitelist Instead
Google Webmaster Central blog has a great blog post on Web 2.0 spam and what webmasters can do to prevent of cut down on the number of instances that they are attacked by it. Nefarious Internet marketers like to use fake social media accounts to send spam to unsuspecting people. Evidently, it works. Are they using your site?
They could be. And if you get a reputation for spam then these guys will be hurting you.
Google recommends a combination of CAPTCHA forms and a blacklist. A blacklist is a list of e-mail addresses or IP addresses that are blocked from sending messages through e-mail, messaging systems, or other communications media. But, how about a whitelist?
The CAPTCHA form is a necessity in today’s marketing climate. Bots can’t solve the problems so if someone does get through the CAPTCHA you know it’s a real person. But real people can be spammers too. So you need a back up measure to cut down on the spam that makes it through your CAPTCHA.
That’s where the whitelist comes in. A whitelist is a list of names that you DO allow through. It’s more secure than a blacklist because if someone doesn’t have authorization to send a message through your system then they won’t be allowed to. A blacklist does just the opposite; it adds addresses to a list that is banned.
The downside to a whitelist is that you could stop messages coming from legitimate users. But if you have a low instance of false positives then it will be worth it. You should have a member of your staff review the addresses on your whitelist periodically to see if any of them are legitimate. That way you can police the list and find out if there are any e-mail or IP addresses you need to approve to stay on good terms with the users of your website.
10 Tools To Create Traffic To A Website
So you’ve built yourself a website, found an awesome product(s) to sell and now you have a boat load of expectation, but the one key ingredient for a successful online business is the one you are missing. Traffic; with out it your online endeavors are doomed to failure. There are many methods for creating traffic. Seems everyone has a story or two with the old cliché "a sure fire secret for getting tons of traffic to your website".
Getting traffic to your website can be a difficult task, if you acquire the wrong information (and trust me there’s lots of it out there). But with the right knowledge, it can be a quite pleasant experience. There are many free and paid methods for creating website traffic, all effective if use properly. But it all starts with a well optimized keyword strategy.
An optimized website will not only save you time in the Organic SEO game, it will also save you piles of money in the Paid Search arena. Before developing a website, it is also good practice starts with keyword research and your implementation strategy.
With that said lets look at some traffic creating tools. Below are ten tools to create traffic to website.
1. Google Keyword Tool: One of the best keyword research tools out there. The Google keyword tool provides up to date stats of keyword word search volume. What better way to get keyword data than from worlds leading search engine, than to get it straight from the horse’s mouth. This tool also allows you to check keyword pricing within the Google paid inclusion database Adwords. Great thing, as like many of the big g’s suite of tools this one is also free.
2. SEO Book: A great resource for creating a foundation of understanding. Written by one of the few search engine optimization super powers Aaron Wall. The seobook.com website is a great resource to get you moving in the write right direction. You will definitely want to check out the tools tab, from keyword analysis to keyword search trends; there are tools for you to explore every facet of the game. Becoming a member of the community at seobook.com was an integral part of me becomes a better search engine marketer.
3. Submit Ease: semi-automated directory submission software that combines both web directory submission and article directory submission in an easy-to-use package. Great tool I’ve been Able to submit my website to over 1,000 (3,000 remaining) web directories with the all important human feel that the search engines love so much. Also article syndication is a breeze. You are able to submit to over 600 of the top article directories.
4. Bookmarking Demon: This is one of those tools that every online marketer should have in their arsenal whether you like automated tools or not. This is a fully automated social bookmarking and pinging software that will result in unlimited amounts of back links. How else will you be able to create over one hundred Social Bookmarking accounts with just a few clicks of your mouse? It was totally worth the $97 I paid for it back when it was new, it’s a bit more now but I don’t blame them free upgrades and all the benefits, its well worth the price. (Thank you Edwin Brian).
5. Google Insight Search and Trends: Want to know who is searching for a particular key term. What to know what country, what region, what city is a keyword search most popular. Want to see which search terms are on the rise. These free tools from Google are a great source of inspiration. Works wonders for paid search campaigns, allows you to target keywords by frequently searched country, regions, and city for maximum ROI. Both tools are similar with insight adding a bit more in-depth features. With these tools and a well optimized landing page you can clean up with your paid search campaigns.
6. Fast Blog Finder: Over the past few years SEO has transitioned from who can optimize a web page to reach closest to a 3% keyword density to more of a popularity contest. Meaning the more back links you have to your website the better chance you stand of out ranking your opponent. Just the share number of links is not the say all in this equation, the rank of the pages linking to you also plays a huge role appearing on the first page of Google. What way to get high quality links pointing to your website than a popular weblog (blog)? Not only are these site popular with surfers, they are also popular with the search engine and held in high regards. With Fast Blog Finder software you can find hundreds of themed blogs in minutes! Sure beats the alternative.
7. Animoto: So you need video for your website, but don’t know how to use a video camera, so what! No excuse not to have video on the web, Animoto is an awesome tool that allows you to build movie style trailers videos with photos you upload from you computer. You can choose from a variety of music that is preloaded with the service or upload your own. The interface is quite simple, you upload the photos, write a few texts, select your music and they do the rest.
8. Tube Mogul: After you create your videos you want reach your target audience. Lets face it Video sharing is one of the top techniques to get targeted traffic to your website quickly and cost effectively. Tube Mogul is a free video syndication tool that allows you to distribute to multiple video sharing platforms (YouTube Viddler, etc…) How cool is that? For an alternative with more reach. Traffic Geyser includes features such as lead page generators, social bookmarking, advance scheduling, podcasting and more.
9. Keyword Elite: Great keyword research tool that save a ton of time, this tool scours the internet for keywords using variety of source. Instead of spending hours research keywords, let KE do it for you. Build a list of up to 10,000 keywords (of course this will take some time) without all the time spent in front of the computer. The fun doesn’t stop there, KE interfaces with Word Tracker and Keyword Discovery to bring you a whole lot of keyword researching power. Find out what keywords your Adwords competitors are buying, spy on you competition, see how optimized their websites are. Keyword Elite is like having you personal all-in-one keyword research tool.
10. Social Media: The social networks are great source of targeted traffic, look at twitter for instance. Twitter’s a media baby; everyone’s doing it from celebs to ball players. Organize you message and tweet to your hearts content, just remember ad value not take away from it. Facebook is also a viable source of traffic. What are you waiting for? Create your profile, develop your fan page interacting with you audience is a great way to get targeted visitors.
Other Great Tools that missed the list
Traffic Travis
Web CEO
SEO Elite
Web links SEO
Deep Linking: Taking Visitors to the Relevant Page on Your Website -
The World Wide Web, as the name indicates, provides a web publisher with numerous opportunities to promote his website by linking a page of his site to another page of a different website. This is known as link popularity building or simply link building. Deep linking is a way of link popularity building in which you choose to link an interior page (always the most relevant page) from your website rather than your homepage to the host web page. When you choose an affiliate to host your link, you choose to link a page which may provide the visitors the content they are looking for.
This is not the case when you link your homepage instead. Homepage at best gives the visitors an introductory overview about your website. If customers are looking for a specific product from your site, they have to go through several navigational steps to reach the page they are looking for. In the process, they may get lost and get disinterested. However, if you take your customer directly to the page, chances are that you have got hold of a potential customer.
Deep linking is the key to a successful affiliate program. By increasing your site’s ranking and visibility, you attract more visitors, and more visitors translate into more business, which is good for you. One way link building using deep links is a great way to increase your site’s visibility on search engines. It eliminates the hazards of linking back to a ‘bad neighborhood’. There are several consultants providing link building services . They will tell you how to do good business by building links. They also help you in creating specially designed pages keeping in mind their deep linking importance. So do link building with deep links to increase your site’s ranking, visibility and popularity.
Dynamic Content: Understand It from SEO Point of View
Before Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, web pages loaded into a user’s browser needed to change the information displayed through another round-trip to the server. The user interacted with the page and a new page was delivered by the server to the client. Thus the server had to spend additional time processing a page request. Frame sets were also incorporated so that one frame’s content stays constant and the other changes its content depending on user’s activity on the initial page. But SEO services providers have now more on offer for you – say dynamic content one among them.
Dynamic content is nothing but all about changing the content of the HTML document. It’s done by inserting and deleting elements after the document has been loaded. For example, a script can insert several section titles at the beginning of a document. Or it can replace a list of section titles with a list of links to the actual section in the document. Are you using dynamic content provided by an SEO company ? Your dynamic content may be anything like a content management system (CMS), e-commerce solutions or product catalogs, news, events or blogs.
If you find that search engines are having a hard time to find, index and rank your site, you need to consult with professional and established team of programmers who can help you get the best in your effort. An SEO expert can also be approached for the same. The issues with dynamic content mainly relate to technical points that may make it difficult for spiders to properly read dynamic content because of URL formulation problems such as session IDs, infinite loops “trapping” spiders etc. If the content is of high quality, and well fits into SEO tactics, search engines will still love it to crawl. URL rewriting can come as a real good idea for it as well.
Google Sending Out Keyword Suggestions via Email
Google Sending Out Keyword Suggestions via Email
A few days ago Google sent me the following email, which somehow sent me keywords for other websites.
Google did a follow up email appoligizing for the first email sending me the wrong keywords and sending me a new list of keywords.
Almost every time I start a new AdWords campaign I am impressed by new features that recommend more keywords inline during the sign-up process. This is sorta where there is great risk in data sharing with ad networks. The more data you feed into the network the more likely that data is to pour right back out into the hands of competitors & higher market prices.
Link Baiting Helps in Getting Huge Amount of Website Traffic
Its a dream of every website owner that they get higher page rank in search engines without affecting their budget for promotional activities. The technique of link baiting could provide highly lucrative results. Link baiting is about making use of articles and anchor text titles on which the user clicks on to view the information, or get a free download, or provide any other attractive offer for your company.
Basically a link bait technique is itself simpler and can and offer various features like free downloading of eBooks, coupons for products/services, software or any other thing the visitor regards useful for them.
The main idea of it is to create good amount of enthusiasm and excitement through the means of blog, article or content in your website, helping in creating inbound links. Here the content is the bait and link can be considered as catch. One of the best and successful way for producing link bait is to write an appealing and catchy article about a popular news headline. You can submit this article to another websites and blogs to get more back links. The technique of link baiting can be used repeatedly in order to divert the incoming links to your website.
This method of writing quality articles on latest news is result oriented and have greater impact over the customers. If the content is good and original you can get many quality links to your site. Moreover it has been seen that a website that has greater amount of content is likely to get higher page rankings.
You can also do dome mixing of free content taken from article directories, but it is always better to keep the percentage of original content higher than free one. Many sites have blog websites in Word Press that can even send pings to article and blog directories and also social networking sites.
Process of link baiting require regular steps to keep it going rather than posting it and forgetting it. Webmasters can give useful ideas about the steps for bringing forth the content to users’ attention, thus increasing the website traffic. It comprises of blogs, press release, article submission, forums and link building.
Link baiting according to search engine marketing is a strategy that can create huge number of links and site traffic. It is an important piece of content of a web page that is created with the purpose of collecting maximum number of links from different online sources.
Copyright © 2009
SPINX - Web Design Los Angeles Company offers services like Los Angeles web design , Website Design Pasadena, Web Design Glendale, Website Design Beverly Hills & also across the globe.
What is internet marketing
Internet Marketing: Isn’t it a concept we commonly hear of at almost every strata of the Internet community? For some of us, this kind of a conversation becomes boring, and totally Latin-like whenever topic of Internet Marketing is brought up.
In this article, we will talk about marketing and familiarize you with what it is, and how it can be done, using understandable English and avoiding often incomprehensible technical language. So go through the following article and rest assured, whenever your peers start debating on the topic, you will have a point to make.
What is it?
A variety of phrases are used for Internet marketing. Online marketing, Web marketing, e-Marketing, i-marketing, all point to marketing using the Internet.
Through the Internet, one can found an entire business empire. Many business are run wholly on the Internet. The promotion and expansion of a business through the Internet is called marketing via Internet, or simply Internet marketing. So great is the potential of e-Marketing, that whatever form may the business follow - be it wholly online, partially online, or wholly offline, it will definitely be beneficial for it in some way or the other. The fact that many businesses are wholly online, provides explicit support to the statement that this kind of Marketing has the potential to be the backbone of any business enterprise.
Objectives behind Internet Marketing:
Basically, Internet marketing is making use of the Internet to do the following:
1) Spreading the message of a company or advertising the company’s products and services through the world wide web.
2) Researching on the net to examine the customers nature, requirements so as to provide enhanced quality services.
3) Promoting your own products and services or even selling space on your site to advertisers.
Components of Internet Marketing:
Internet Marketing includes the following components:
1) Making a website
The basic requirement in starting an online business, or promote an existing business is making ones own website which would include important detail about you, your business, your goods and products, your services, portfolio, etc.
2) Search Engine Marketing
Means promoting a website online through search engines. Today, most of the constant visitors being brought to the sites is via search engines.
3) E-mail Marketing
Means marketing by e-mail. You can acquire or purchase email addresses of customers and keep them updated about your services and goods.
4) Promotion
You can either promote about your services on other websites/blogs or ask others looking to do the same to advertise on your website. Advertising is an essential part of Internet marketing, as it is through advertising that people get to know about new, better sites.
5) Press Releases
Press releases are key news items sent out either to advertise about a new service, or to provide support for existing ones.
6) Marketing by Blogs
Means taking part in discussions, commenting, debating on topics via blogs.
7) Article Marketing
Means promoting ones website, providing information on varied topics/niches via articles.
Five Essential Things for Taking SEO Services
There are various methods of SEO you should follow for your website. SEO is very crucial for every website out there on the WWW. Without SEO strategies, which are genuine, you can’t get your website to be known, and get any profit from it.
1) Content is King: Every search engine, Google included, looks for only the content. Content is the most important part of your website that will assist your website to get higher rankings. Without content, your website is just another website, without much importance. So, your website should have keyword rich, unique and quality content.
2) Link Building: Link building is the most important just as content. For this, there are numerous ways. One such method is writing to the related Webmasters and letting them know of your site’s existence. If they believe that your site has some content, which is linkable, they will definitely link to your content.
3) No one can guarantee number one in search engines: Google is one the most important search engines out there, and even Google top employees cannot guarantee your number one position in Google search. It is the result of your hard work and genuine SEO link building that will position you at the top of the search results. Otherwise, you cannot just get to the top of any search engines.
4) Don’t trust blackhat SEO companies: Blackhat SEO strategies are those, which don’t do genuine SEO but go by such methods as doorway pages, invisible text, keyword stuffing, etc. SEO should be done via ethical ways only. Otherwise, search engines will ban your website.
5) Do not do reckless link buildings: If your blog is two days old and has 1200 incoming links, then Google will ban you on the third day. So, reckless link building is equal to link spamming. So, avoid over linking.
These and more of the strategies to do effective SEO are available in the resources mentioned below. SEO is an important strategy to get your website to the top of search engines, thereby building your brand, getting sales, and profit. So, genuine natural SEO strategy is extremely crucial for the success of a website.
Arrow, a renowned Internet marketing company in Australia, provides effective SEO services that suit your business requirements. If you are looking for SEO in Melbourne, contact Arrow!
Search Engine Optimization Firm -What To Expect?
As we all know, search engine optimization is a must for the twenty first century business environment. If one wants to survive in this tough economic conditions one needs to makes ones presence felt, locally and internationally. The Internet is one place, where there is a possibility of meeting zillions of clients, in just one minute. There should however be some decorum when one is doing business online. There are search engine optimization, SEO firm that help bring the business upfront and increase profits by keeping the sales running. As it is the well known fact that attraction leads to desire, so it is applicable to buying and selling on the Internet.
To be successful in online marketing is hard these days, particularly with the level of competition among millions of other websites. Luckily, there are plenty of good search engine optimization firms available. On the other hand, as in any other industry, there are a few firms that are waiting to take advantage of you. The fact is this; optimization is no more a simple industry. Those who rely on keeping their customers in the dark, are in for a fix and with so many great firms out, your company simply need to put up with average communication and results formed by poor-quality SEO agencies.
Points to be looked for while hiring the services from any SEO firm:
Before choosing the perfect SEO firm for your website, one must do a check on the ones available. The information on the SEO firm is easy to get either from the Internet or from the yellow pages. One can also consult a friend or check on the firms the rival company is using to increase traffic on their site. The first thing to look out for, in a firm, is a good track record. The firm in question should have a good number of years of working experience in the field of providing information about search engine optimization. An ideal should be about three to four years. One should remember that it takes time to build a long term result so interest and patience are important from your side also.
If possible one should look for credibility. A good testimony written by some company who has had favorable results should be ideal. Also one should not just simply accept the guarantees given on the web site. One should check if the promises given are achievable or not and whether that is what the aims are. If there are a zillion hits on the page and nothing got to do with selling and buying then it does no good and you are ultimately taken for a ride.
Getting a high-quality firm isn’t cheap, so it would be right to expect results for what one has paid for. Moreover, a qualified firm won’t just listen to what you want and claim to be able to do it, but will also offer other ideas and alternative methods that might in the long run prove to be valuable.
What is Your Analytics Bounce Rate?
Your Website Bounce Rate
When discussing website stats, most people will say how many ‘hits’ their site has gotten. Hits or pageviews, is the number of times your webpage or pages were visited. Once upon a time that stat was important, it was used to suggest how successful your website was in getting visitors. But today that stat is essentially meaningless. A person can buy traffic and get literally millions of hits on their website.
Another popularly used stat to suggest your website is successful is ‘unique visitors’. But this also means very little if these visitors aren’t exploring the website you have poured your heart and soul into.
Today, with tools such as Google analytics, there are detailed metrics, that can be easily understood, which can be used to determine the actual performance of your website. One very important stat you should be aware of is your analytics bounce rate
What does ‘Bounce Rate’ mean?
Your bounce rate essentially measures the number of visitors who landed on your site and then left without giving you even one single click. Ouch!
Why this stat is considered important is because it is taken from the perspective of your visitors: ‘I came, I saw nothing worthwhile, I left”. It tells you the number of visits with just one pageview. Meaning your visitors were not impressed in the slightest. You can easily check the stat which shows you the percentage of people and the amount of time they stayed on your site.
A high bounce rate suggests to the search engines that the entrance page was not relevant to your visitors. This is one of their measuring sticks of quality. Having a lower website bounce rate means better quality, means better search engine placement.
At What Point Should You Be Concerned About Your Website Bounce Rate?
One important consideration is where a particular is visitor coming from. Since not all of the sources directing visitors to your site are equal, the quality of traffic they are sending will vary. There are differing analysis of what the exact percentages are, but generally anything between a 50% - 75% bounce rate should be a cause for concern. Obviously, anything above that, and you should seriously rethink everything about your web project.
But even with a 75% bounce rate, don’t start tearing your hair out. Use the information in you analytics to start improving your site. Its not that difficult really, and in less than an hour you can be improving the overall quality of your website.
Your Website Is One Big Homepage
One of your analytics stats will tell you where your visitors are coming from, and where they are landing. It is important to remember that many people will not be landing on your homepage on their first visit. They may be coming from an article you wrote that is indexed by the search engines, or from a link from another website which directed them to a webpage with specific information. So, essentially every page on your website or blog is a potential landing page. If you have 10,000 pages, that’s 10,000 landing sites!
It’s not rocket science to suggest that will have a lower website bounce rate, and better conversions if you are doing internet marketing, if you make sure to tailor your ‘landing pages’ to be precisely what the visitor was promised.
To help you understand you analytics bounce rate better you can get Google Analytics here for free. http://www.google.com/analytics/
Be Fearless
Billy Ojai
Benefits Of Financial Search Engine Optimization Services
When people search for what you have to offer, they seldom go further than the first page of results. Is your finance business ranked up there, visible and in plain sight of anyone and everyone searching for your services or product? If not, your company is missing the boat. Proper SEO and internet marketing strategies are essential if you want your business to flourish and rise above the competition.
When it comes to optimizing your site, it is a complex process that requires the knowledge and expertise of professionals who know this business inside and out. Algorithms constantly change, as well as effective internet marketing methods. Both on your site and off, many different processes must be implemented correctly in order for your business to be highly visible and attractive to the search engines and your visitors.
Effective SEO for your finance business involves many things. On site, your pages must be optimized correctly for your chosen key terms and phrases. The content should be original and compelling, effective titles and description tags must be created. Then comes all of the off site work, which is just as crucial as what is displayed on your website.
Creation of content off site is essential for a high page ranking as well. Articles must be written to drive traffic and help ranking, manual backlinks from authority sites need to be obtained, and press releases written and submitted. In many circumstances, a corporate blog is beneficial as well. Additionally, your site needs to be submitted to popular web directories. All of this work helps your link popularity, which is extremely important in the eyes of the search engines.
Are you experiencing the results you expected with your finance business? If not, you need to consider hiring a highly reputable search engine optimization firm to turn things around. In just a few months, you could actually be ranking on page one for your chosen key terms and phrases! The benefits of this kind of positioning is likely more than you could ever imagine.
Search Engine Optimization: The Future Is Now
Many companies are still allocating their budgets to elephant-sized traditional advertising campaigns in print and television. But much of the advertising industry is trying to move away from commercials and are scrambling for new ways to get in view of the public eye. This presents a monumental challenge during a time when every dollar is being asked to work harder. Growing credibility and results from the search engine optimization industry is bringing hope to forward thinkers that are looking for real solutions to their marketing budgets.
There are traditional two ways to achieve visibility in the search engines: pay-per-click campaigns and organic search. PPC campaigns operate by having a company pay to have its site automatically pop up in the search results when certain keywords or terms are queried. Usually these are denoted by appearing in a different colored box at the top of the search results, or on the right side with standard short sales copy. With search engines, the advertisers (in this case the PPC campaign) bid on keyword phrases that are relevant to their website or pay a fixed price per click. These advertisements are usually referred to as ‘sponsored links’ or ‘sponsored ads’. Cost per click varies depending on the search engine. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search, and Microsoft adCenter are currently the three largest search engine networks you can advertise with, and they all operate under a bid-based model.
The second type is organic search, which is the more natural, unpaid way to get ranked. White hat SEO firms prefer this way because it rewards hard, clean work that is legally executed. Organic search results are ordered and displayed according to rankings based on a numbered of pre-determined factors of the specific search engine and its algorithm. One of the biggest implementations you can use to improve organic search ranking is through keyword recognition. Sites that are trying to improve their organic rank should optimize their keywords and terms throughout their website in the title tags, meta tags, on-page content and home page. Google currently claims that their search engine users click organic search results more than the paid search adverts. PEW Research Center also reports that Internet users avoid clicking on search results. Achieving high organic search listings is the primary strategy of all white hat search engine optimization firms.
Organic search and search engine optimization are creating new standards for marketing and advertising, and possibly leading to a new standard ‘model’ for the future of strategic communications. Through website optimization, it is possible to acquire conversions and lifetime customers faster, cheaper and easier due to the increased flow of relevant internet traffic that are now looking to the internet first for their consumption. Volacci is the leading Drupal SEO company and very passionate about your online success. By the end of your contract you will have at least as much additional business from your web site as you spend on our services… or we’ll work for free until you do.
My keywords are hurting my business!
Hey, you say, aren’t keywords supposed to be good for me?
We know that keywords are the foundation on which any SEO strategy is build. The pages you will create are optimized around the keywords, the content you will create will be focused around those keywords, the links you build will be to those keyword pages, and you will syndicate and promote those same keyword pages across relevant user, web and social communities.
So this brings us to the conclusion that choosing the right keywords can make or break your SEO campaign ahead.
Some examples of wrong keywords:
1. The keyword has very little or no traffic
2. The keyword has not been searched for in the past 2 years
3. The keyword shows a downward trend over the years
4. The keyword has nothing to do with your business, or the services/products you offer
5. The keyword is VERY competitive (you don’t want to spend the next few years chasing a
keyword)
6. The keyword cannot translate into a conversion for your business
How to choose the right keywords?
Choosing keywords has nothing to do with your understanding of your business. While this is a bold statement to make, choosing the right keywords is more about studying statistical, analytical and factual data of the keywords performance and user behavior over years.
So let’s see how we can overcome the wrong keyword traps.
1. The keyword has very little or no traffic
There are many tools that let can help you understand the traffic potential of the keyword you plan to choose. Google Adword gives a free tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) that can be very useful in understanding the traffic potential (volumes in last month, local volume, and global volume) for your keyword. In addition you can check out the competition you will probably face in targeting that keyword. You will also find various permutations and combinations of your keyword and their traffic potential, and decide to choose a better keyword that is a traffic puller as well as has minimum competition. If the keyword does not show up with traffic numbers (as in case of keyword with very low volume), then it’s time to analyze your keyword again.
There are a variety of paid tools as well, but I am mostly an advocate for the free stuff.
2. The keyword has not been searched for in the past 2 years
If your keyword has not been search for in the past, it’s unlikely that the keyword will suddenly start attracting traffic, unless you have some inside information into a new trend.
Using Google Adword tool in point above, and using another tool like Google Insights (http://www.google.com/insights/search/) you will get an idea into the history and performance of those keywords. Google Insights gives you keyword volume percentage, and a graph which shows the trend of keyword usage from 2004 till date. It can also tell you which countries show maximum usage of the keyword, and permutation and combinations of the keyword with traffic volume. I have found many right keywords using this tool.
3. The keyword shows a downward trend over the years
If the keyword you plan to choose is showing a downward spiraling trend, its best to avoid that keyword. Targeting a keyword takes a long time, effort and patience (not to forget money), and in that time the keyword could become worthless.
Using Google Trends (http://www.google.co.in/trends) you can predict rising or falling interest in your keyword, industry, geography, business etc. Used in combination with Google Adword and Google Insights you will be more capable of predicting the traffic potential of a keyword.
Another great place for checking the trends is on a site like Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/). There are millions of people talking about everything under the sun. Search for your keyword and see if people are talking about it, and what they are saying. Some very useful keyword hints can come out this effort, not to mention some good contacts.
Enter your keyword in the search box. Check if there are any Blogs, Lenses, and Forums etc about the topic. Spending some time on these sites can give you insightful information into keyword usage, variations and possible trends. Even better, invest some time and participate in these sites.
4. The keyword has nothing to do with your business, or the services/products you offer
This seems silly, but you will be surprised with the number of keywords that lead to a page that has nothing to do with the information you are searching for. Before we blame the search engines, look deep into your own list of keywords. Do all of them relate to your business, products and services? Or are some just attractive as they pull lots of traffic?
5. The keyword is VERY competitive (you don’t want to spend the next few years chasing a keyword)
Personally I stay away from very competitive keywords unless your business depends on it or your pride. In my case I want to rank #1 for the keyword “seo expert”. It’s very competitive, but very relevant so I don’t mind spending a year or so chasing it. But would I spend my time trying to rank for the keyword “seo”? You get it.
6. The keyword cannot translate into a conversion for your business
There is a lot of time that needs to be invested in choosing the right keywords, analyzing their traffic potential, studying their competition, following their trends and usage. Now what if you manage to rank well for those keywords, only to realize the traffic from certain keywords just does not convert into business. Check to see if the keywords you are targeting will attract buyers or window shoppers.
Avoiding these pit falls will help you target the right keywords, and then the next step is to build a SEO strategy around those winning keywords.
Next Page »