|
My clients have been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, People magazine, Playboy Online, The Toronto Star, Upclose Magazine,
Home & Garden Television, Culinary Thymes, ABC News, The Salt Lake Tribune, Houston 11, The Washington Post,
The Honolulu Star & more.
|
<< back | Home | Site Map | Articles
Overture... Oops?
It's All About Good Keywords, Right?
A lot of people recommend using the Overture
Search Tool as a method for selecting "niche" markets or "good" keywords. Overture,
themselves, offer the search tool to help people decide which keywords to buy exposure for
in their pay per click service.
Great in theory. And, in all honesty, I enjoy using the Overture Keyword Tool, too.
But most tools should be used with common sense applied. But wait, let me show you!
Go to Overture's advertiser's tools, here;
http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/adcenter/tools/index.jhtml
Click on "term suggestion tool"
When the window opens up, type in: html
(nothing else, just "html" - no brackets or quotation marks or anything)
Hit "go"
This is a good keyword? For who?
When the results show up, in the list, you'll see the term
"1252 charset content content equiv html text type window"
(screensnap, left)
"Apparently" thousands of people have searched for this "exact" term inside of a month. Imagine that!
I don't think I could remember it, much less search for it.
But... here's the fun.... you'll notice that each keyword is - a link! Hmm... Curious and curiouser.
Do you suppose that people searching for keywords might be clicking on these links?
I know that if I wanted to buy a keyword, and noticed that it was a link, I'd click it
to see what other information it would give me. Wouldn't you?
And... if I saw a funny or strange looking one, I'd probably click it out of sheer
curiosity. Wouldn't you? Curiosity is a pretty powerful thing, indeed.
That would certainly explain how "thousands" of people have "searched" some of those
odd phrases. Like... "doctype dtd en html html ietf public" and "error head head html socket title title"
So... perhaps the Overture search tool results are not just what
"people on the web" are searching for.... but also a great deal of what
"people searching at Overture are clicking on"??
I've always said that software does not have a brain, and that even
brilliant software cannot defy human nature.
Sure. Use the tool for ideas. But don't forget to use common sense - and your
referrer logs - to help pick your keywords.
Oh.. and if you wanted to, you could write to Overture and ask them to disable the
links in their search suggestion tool. That would do a whole lot towards making it
more accurate.
|
Feel welcome to reprint my articles as is. Please don't change them. All I ask in return is a
credit link to my site. Thanks.
|
|
 |
