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This leads me to thinking about setting up a domain for myself rather than for clients all the time. The theory is that I could bypass the middle man and create great content for my own site in a topic area I am interested in! The site would, of course, be profitable because I would have chosen a keyword area that is at the same time popular and not very competative.
To this end I did a number of searches in areas I was interested in and looked at the PR of the sites in Google. I figured if the top ranked sites had a PR of 5 or 6 I could aspire to the top positions as this is in the ball park of what I have created in the past. With my newly won skills from these forums I even suppose I might aspire to a PR of 7.
This search lead me to a two word phrase that I found interesting and the top sites were, at best, pr6. I then went to the Overture suggestion tool and found the keyword phrase was used 64K times in may. Some of the three word keyword phrases associated were used between 1 and 5K times in may. This is by far the best I found in the areas I am interested in personally.
I then went to Wordtracker and found that a few of the lesser keyword phrases rated as high as KEI 400+ while the majority rated OK and the original two word phrase rated less than one because of the number of pages that use that term.
So much for background, now the questions that will hopefully take the blinders off in a few areas I am not sure of.
1. Given that a keyword phrase is used x number of times in one month in Overture, how can this be extrapilated (estimated) into total internet searches for that term (especially Google)?
2. If the search term is seasonally dependant as I assume the one I am interested in is, how can I get reliable yearly information?
3. How can I decide on the value of a keyword for my purposes if the Overture information is that the keyword is good while the Wordtracker KEI rating is poor but I see the top sites for that keyword are only PR 5-6 and I aspire to the same or better ranking?
Not sure I can be of much help, but to get the ball rolling...
>>1. Given that a keyword phrase is used x number of times in one month in Overture, how can this be extrapilated (estimated) into total internet searches for that term (especially Google)?
Very difficult to do, often the overture inventory is misleading. Without a site in the SERPs for a keyphrase its hard to measure volume. A simple way is to open an adwords account and see how many impressions your ad gets at #1.
>>2. If the search term is seasonally dependant as I assume the one I am interested in is, how can I get reliable yearly information?
Keep a record yourself is the only way I know. Perhaps get to know other webmasters/affiliate managers in the field.
>>3. How can I decide on the value of a keyword for my purposes if the Overture information is that the keyword is good while the Wordtracker KEI rating is poor but I see the top sites for that keyword are only PR 5-6 and I aspire to the same or better ranking?
Both these tools have limited value, but when used in conjunction with all the other information you can find out about the search term you can get a feel for its value. This feel gets better the longer you do it. Remember that PR value is not everything.
The best keywords I know are the ones that find you :)
