Key Word Popularity Statistics

[mikefromvt]

Hi.

We need to locate popularity statistics for a set of approximately 50 key word phrases. Will WordTracker help us? We had bad results from current Google Key Word Tool. We received an "insufficient data" for each of the 50 key word phrases.

We would appreciate any suggestions as to a resource for reliable popularity statistics.

Thanks

Mike

[chiron]

WordTracker has a trial as I recall, it is extremely fast/simple to use, so you will know rapidly if you will benefit or not, and while I find it has significant failings, I blew a few hundred bucks on a 2-year sub, as it provides directional assistance as long as you take everything that it or any other such product has to say with a pinch of salt. Newer edition of Google trends also recently out and are also salt-suggested, but worth looking at for general direction in early stages of KW targeting.

https://www.wordtracker.com/trial/ | Google Trends

Maybe it's just me, but I find the weakest parts of these tools is any kind of "KPI" or translated, the "biggest bang for your buck" simplistic recommendations; typically a weak "traffic vs competition" math deal, better in my experience is to look at traffic trends and slowly aim for some terms (and the many tailings of these) that you feel you can work towards over time.

And better still, depending on the type of site but presuming a goal of "conversions" very broadly defined, think about: will these terms you consider, gut feeling, likely be people interested in what you are "selling" or showing. I've seen so many SEOs and clients and also myself get lathered and popping corks because they just got 10k sessions (or some big jump in traffic, whatever) and the first question I try to remember to ask myself or others is: so what did that do to the bottom line?

If no change from pre-bump traffic to the bottom line, who cares? That's being somewhat cavalier, there can be benefits from a larger traffic stream (some may link to you, if you have social widgets they might digg or stumble and so forth).