My dreadful habit – forgetting about keyword research 24 June 2009
Sometimes, I really don't want to think about keywords.
Don't get me wrong. Of course, I know keywords are important. It never ceases to amaze me just how much I can find out about what people are looking for, how many different ways I can find to express the same idea, how many great content ideas I can generate or how many niche markets I can discover. The possibilities are as limitless as the English language.
But sometimes, all I want to do is write.
The keywords can look after themselves. All I want to do is let the thoughts and then the words flow. I have arguments with myself, imaginary conversations with people I've met one time or another. I bash out sentences and phrases, I cut, paste, and delete. I play with words and throw ideas about in my head and onto the screen.
At times like that, I don't want to be disturbed. When that feeling hits me, I'll shut down my email, unplug the phone and just write a blog post. My favorite exercise is to time myself for 50 minutes and just keep writing non-stop. I'm doing that now and it's one of the great pleasures of the job I do.
But of course, once I've finished reality needs to kick in.
I'll leave my 50 minutes of work and go and have a coffee, or a walk along the shore. Then I'll come back to it and start the job of editing. I'll cut my copy to ribbons, check my keywords and send my copy off to our SEO, Mark Nunney for his input.
However, this blog post is a little different.
I've had all the usual fun with writing. But this time I've been keeping a little eye on keyword research with the new SEO Blogger tool that Andy Mindel has been leading in Wordtracker. It's a Firefox add-on and it sits there right beside my publishing system.
I'm doing keyword research, but instead of seeing it as a separate chore, it's an integral part of my writing. I can play with keywords in the same way as I play with ideas and words.
The tool really does help me optimize as I write and I've used it to check out ideas in mid sentence.
So after a 50-minute writing session, a walk on the beach and a piece of furious editing, I've got a post I'm happy with. Even better, I know exactly how many times I've used 'blog', 'blogger', 'keywords', and 'keyword research' in my post.
The image below shows you what I can see now as I write. My editing window is on the right of my browser window and SEO Blogger with my keyword research is on the left.
SEO Blogger is a pretty cool tool and I'm unlikely to forget about keywords in my future posts. Check it out for yourself and download it here.
20 comments
I had a Deja Vu on the first four paragraphs... Was that intended? Maybe not..
I have to agree!
Last year I got involved in a very unique business and became a member in its online marketing group. A feature of this group was regular submission of articles.
I soon found that, despite my enthusiasm for the whole project, having to do the keyword stuff, write relevant content etc. I soon found myself getting lazy!
However, In "5 Minute SEO With SEO Blogger", Chris Garret explains how to use SEO Blogger to quickly optimize your pages for search engines. Like you, I did this and was so pleased with it I've adopted it into my activities and renewed my enthusiasm.
I recommend it to all serious online writers!
Frank Heath Newmarket, Auckland, NZ SEO Services Tel: 09 5291195 Skype: frank.heath1
Hello,
Thanks for the new tool for keywords - SEO Blogger. I'am living in Scandinavia - and is it possible to have a way to search keywords in this arear?
Have av good day.
Regards, Claus Perlt
@Claus - We get our keywords from the large US metacrawlers DogPile and Metacrawler and from a combination of ISPs and Search Engines in the UK.
We realise the need to provide other keywords and we are actively seeking out this new data. As soon as these new data sources become available we will offer them on the Wordtracker website.
Sorry we can't help further with this at the moment.
It seems like a great tool. Thank you.
Very interesting guide... Thanks..
I think the SEO Blogger is a fantastic tool. I was wondering about the search count though. Why is there a difference between the SEO Blogger count and the count at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/?
@Justin - thanks for your comments - the reason that there is a difference between the two figures is that the keyword database for the free keywords tool reaches back 160 days, but the database for SEO Blogger (and our new beta tool) goes back 365 days.
I hope this explains the discrepancy for you, but do let us know if you've got any other questions.
Mal Wordtracker Customer Service
Damn, that sound's so easy if you think about it.
Thank you for the information
Sometimes it's really that simple, isn't it? I feel a little stupid for not thinking of this myself/earlier, though.
I don’t usually reply to posts but I will in this case. I’ve been experiencing this very same problem with a new WordPress installation of mine. I’ve spent weeks calibrating and getting it ready when all of a sudden… I cannot delete any content. It’s a workaround that, although isn’t perfect, does the trick so thanks! I really hope this problem gets solved properly asap.
I have finally came to the conclusion that the niche market is what its all about. This tool would be of great use for that. It's almost impossible to compete with larger and older sites using hot keywords.
Yes, good spot. Thanks for the recommendation. My challenge is to encourage my customers to also think about keywords and phrases!
Some of the best blog posts were just written, and they still show up at top of the search engines. Why? Because they were excellent articles, and isn't that what search engines really want? Even if you don't have a keyword rich article, if it's a great article, it will still rank very well.
Keep writing, keywords can come later.
Great information.Sounds like a very useful tool for SEO purpose.i really needed such a thing. Thanks.
You make a good set of points. I'm bookmarking this because I confess I had read about this tool and then forgotten about it - there' so many coming out these days :-( But yes, something that effectively looks over your shoulder as you write has to be investigated.
BB
Great site...keep up the good work. :) I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I'm glad I found your blog. Thanks, :)
A definite great read..
-Bill-Bartmann
Hey, I really enjoy your blog. I have a blog too in a totally unrelated field (Online Stock Trading) but I like to check in here on a regular basis, just to see what's going on and it's always interesting to say the least. It's always entertaining what people have to say.