NFFC - 11:28 pm on Jan 15, 2002 (gmt 0)

The core of any sucessful SEO campaign, imho, is indentifing the right keywords. The major problem faced is the amount of "noise" obsuring many valuable keywords, the popular sources of data have become so corrupted that in the main all they show is what other SEO's think are the value keywords.

We fell into this trap almost 18 months ago on one particular site and amongst a keyword set of 20 odd followed the pack on a very important phrase. We had a choice between a couple of two word keyphrases, very close to each other, in fact almost indentical save for two letters. We plumped for the shorter version, the most competitive and seemingly much more searched for, wrong!

After nine months of running the site we switched to the alternative phrase, more on a hunch than anything. BAM! what a difference it made. The worst thing is all the time the right keyword set was under our nose's, our customers reminded us everyday how they searched, we were just too dumb to notice.

Data Mine your emails. For a quick and dirty method fire up whatever Find feature your email app has and stick in some keywords. Compare the numbers, you may just find a gold nugget [or is that a golden nugget :)].