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I've been doing research on certain keywords, and found out about a list of the top 200 keywords people search for.
To my surprise, "Google" was #1, followed by "ebay" and "yahoo"; the same keywords with .com follow close behind. Strange... very strange- obviously some people just don't get the idea of what a location bar is supposed to do. For a cheap laugh, check overture's results for "google" and "yahoo".
I plotted a graph of these 200 keywords, and found a "zipf" distribution as could have been predicted by Jakob Nielsen. All of my keyword variations I checked on overture behaved similarly.
While it would be interesting to optimize for the higher traffic keywords, competition can be fierce. They may also be poor converters. Are there general rules as to where to find the sweet spot? Do you try to optimize for the highest traffic keywords you can get first, or start with the easy pickings?
I believe that boils down to too many trigger happy surfers who type the address before realizing that the site automatically places the cursor in the search box while the page loads.
On keywords you will just have to research your industry.
Some industries convert really well on high-traffic keywords because the converting surfers really don't know enough about the topic where they can refine their searches down to something more appropriate.
On the other hand, "easy pickings" might do better in different industries because people will more likely search with near-specific phrases.
Most people tend to build their site like a zipf curve where the root targets that high-traffic terms while sub-sections focus more on the "easy pickings". That is a good starting point. Then when you build up enough pages, achieve great rankings for most them, monitor the traffic and such, you can get an idea of where you should be focusing your efforts. Perhaps even build a few more sites to target those specific areas that convert better.
You'll want to balance your weight on both areas. High-traffic keywords can really make your day, but with so much competition, if one day you lose your spot you'll need something to really fall back on. That's where the "easy pickings" will come in handy.
worked with a client who could not type www.exaple.co.uk
always typing exaple in google to reach the site
btw took ages to spel exaple
