Bottongos.com

Committed for Better Business

As you may already know, keywords are an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO). And the usual recommended approach to finding the right keywords to target your site involves the ideas of demand, supply, and KEI (and/or CID). I would like to propose that there is one thing missing from this research approach.

What is missing is a consequence of one of the greatest advantages of the Internet. Let me explain. . . When I use the Internet to search for information or software, . . . I don’t care what country hosts the site, nor do I care about the nationality of the site owner. I’m just worried about finding what I’m looking for. So for me, when I use the internet, the fact that the world is made up of countries is not something I think about, nor is it a problem because the internet has, in a way, effectively eliminated the existence of borders between countries.

However, it is this very positive aspect of the internet that I believe leads us to do incomplete keyword research when looking for keywords to target our site.

You see, while the Internet has helped us forget about the existence of countries, when it comes to keywords, we must not forget that the world is made up of countries. The reason for this is that keyword demand can be country specific. This means that a keyword that is in high demand in one country may not be in the same demand in another country. And in some cases, a keyword that is in demand in one country will not be in demand anywhere else.

To illustrate this idea, consider the following demand figures for the listed keywords, as reported by Overture (research conducted in June 2005).

Using the keyword “keyword”,

-Australia: 669

– Canada: 17

– United Kingdom: 10,770

– USA: 125,177

Another example, looking at the keyword “meta tag”,

-Australia: 127

– Canada: 15

– United Kingdom: 2,653

– USA: 10,851

And yet another example, looking at the keyword “meta keyword”,

-Australia: 10

– Canada: 0

– United Kingdom: 57

– USA: 552

If you had a website dealing with SEO and were looking for keywords to target, surely the above results would be interesting. For example, you could see which of the 4 countries above had an interest in your website topic. This, in turn, would tell you which countries you should target and which ones you could safely ignore.

In case you’re wondering how we got the results above. . . We did some basic research on the Overture site and found that it wasn’t that hard to do. We also found that Overture provides demand data in 19 countries around the world, covering Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Australasia. We need to point out that some areas were better represented than others. South America, for example, is represented by only 1 country, while Europe is covered by 11.

By visiting the Overture site, anyone can discover how to use Overture to research keyword demand in any of the 19 countries it supports.

To return to the title of this article. . . I feel, and I hope you agree with me now, that any keyword research that doesn’t take countries into account is incomplete. For one thing, don’t you want to know where your visitors are most likely to come from?

In case you’re not convinced by the point I’m trying to make, I’ll try to explain in my next article other reasons why I think proper keyword research should take countries into account.

serge m botans

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