Advanced Keyword Research – No Shortcuts

There are so many tools available to SEM/SEO specialists today. It seems most “experts” have developed their own shortcut, or have found the best way to get keywords to optimize your site. However, it’s best to be wary of these internet marketers, most have an agenda to hawk the latest, greatest SEM tool to get you the most/best keyword lists for your particular site. What you must always remember is that there is no magic site or keyword tool that will get you the perfect set of keywords for your particular site. Like anything of great importance, doing the detailed research takes time and effort, but reaps great rewards in the end. Skipping important steps always leaves you with an incomplete project, or in this case, with the wrong set of keywords.

Practical Examples of Using the Tilde in Keyword Research

Today I would like to talk about one important step we use in developing our keyword lists at Face Forward Media. That is the use of the tilde key. Using Tilde helps open a door to Google’s thought process. Basically what the tilde key offers is a look at the relationship Google has created between search terms. It essentially acts like a synonym key. For example if I type ~internet into my search bar and look only at the bold words of the sites populated I immediately see that Google recognizes net & network as synonyms for internet. Now if I’m optimizing a site that sells hair nets or fishing nets, I may want to stay away from the keyword net. However more research is necessary before I make that call, so let’s look at a better example.

Say I’m optimizing a site for an apple orchard. I do my routine keyword research and generate my list of optimal keywords. The highest searched keyword that I find is apple with over 4 million monthly searches. Well it’s an apple orchard so common sense would tell you that apple would be a critical keyword. But let’s not skip the tilde step. When I Google ~apple, I get the synonyms: Quick Time, quick time, Mac, Windows, G4, imac, & computer. It takes five pages before I actually get to a site that has anything to do with apples as fruit. So now it appears that the use of the keyword apple will not generate the traffic that I’m looking for and is really not a good choice. Next I put in the second highest searched term which is apples. I enter ~apples and after several pages the only synonym I find is apple. Almost all the sites are fruit related. This is a much more relevant keyword for me. Now I’m on the right track to developing the best keywords for my site. I continue to enter my keyword list to ensure that all my keywords are relevant to my site. As a bonus, if I’m running a PPC campaign for my clients, using tilde generates a great list of negative keywords.

We Take Keyword Research Serious

We find that the use of the tilde key is an essential step in generating the best keyword list possible for our clients.  Anyone can generate traffic to a site, but if it’s not relevant traffic, it means nothing. At Face Forward Media we put in the necessary time and research to develop relevant keywords that get our clients the right type of traffic for their sites; providing them with the best possible internet marketing strategy that they desearve.

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Advanced Keyword Research, Tilde Search