How to use a tool to build links: Introducing the keyword questions tool by Ken McGaffin, 5 November 2008

Creating a useful free tool is a great way to build links. To illustrate the point, we’re releasing the free ‘Keyword Questions’ tool for the first time today. We’ll be starting with no links and we’ll update you on how our inbound links are doing. (If you like the tool please link to it).

You’ll find it at Wordtracker Keyword Questions Tool.

Here’s how it works

You just enter a short keyword – one or two words – and the tool will pair it with six question words - what, why, when, how, where and who – and then conduct a broad match from Wordtracker’s database.

• So someone with a coffee website, could enter ‘coffee’ and find questions like ‘who invented the coffee maker’, ‘why use cold water when brewing coffee’, ‘how to make iced coffee’ and ‘how to clean a coffee pot’.
• A flower shop could enter ‘sorry’ and find questions like ‘how to say sorry to your girlfriend’ or ‘how to say sorry after huge argument’.
• A website on UFOs might be interested to know that the most popular questions on UFOs include ‘how to fake UFO photographs’ or ‘how to build a UFO’.

People have a ton of questions about all sorts of things. They want answers and many of them will go to a search engine to find them. By providing the answers to their questions, you’ll create interesting copy and pick up a lot of relevant traffic for your website.

Use the questions as inspiration for articles and you’ll rank for the question as well as for other related keywords. Furthermore, since each article you write will address a specific question it is therefore more likely to attract keyword rich inbound links.

Creating content based on the questions

Once you’ve completed this research, sift through results to pick what you think are the best or most relevant questions for your market. You can then decide how to answer the questions:

• You could create one web page or one blog post per question.
• You could group similar questions together and create one page per group of questions.
• You could create a single web page that answered all the relevant questions in one place.

Remember, if you like the tool, please link to it. Thanks.

For a comprehensive list of articles on SEO, keyword research, internet marketing and more go to Wordtracker Academy Articles. And there's always the Wordtracker Link Building for Search Engine Optimization page.