SEO Case Study: HostNexus

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• That looks like a good keyword list for starters. I also add some phrases that we call “reversals” just to see if you picked any up. Just reverse the word order for those. Keyword Discovery was highly touted by a number of the top SEO’s in the world including Jill Whalen and a lot of my friends use it as one of their top keyword tools. We all used to use Wordtracker but many feel the interface and straight forward results with KD are superior to Wordtracker at the current point in time. KD has a feature where they can give you a “historical” total of clicks and another total where bots have been filtered out. I found the historical value to be a better indication of search volume… the totals are not to be believed but they give you a relative feel. KD is expensive on a subscription basis and usually only used by SEO shops or pro researchers. I think they have a short trial period where you can do a ton of quality research on the cheap. Google Sktool is also a good tool with a great price – free. Cheers –

  Mal Milligan’s last blog post..What is a SERP?

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• Cheers Mal. I used Keyword Discovery at first too but only the trial. The numbers for the same terms on both KD and WordTracker were alarmingly different so I took both with a pinch of salt really.

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• As a long time HN customer, I was surprised that I didn’t find “reliable web hosting” or “quality web hosting” in your keyword list, but no less than 6 references to “cheap”. I think the quality and reliability angle deserves some emphasis in your SEO strategy.

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  • Very valid points but the stats don’t quite measure up. It’s a sad fact that it appears that not many people search for reliable web hosting or quality web hosting. We actually used to rank on page one for reliable hosting and it brought in no traffuc. :(

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• I created the mother of all keyword lists now and I’ll run it with best practices time delays between queries overnight…

  Google’s Adwords tool gives a supposed “searches per month” figure that many speculate may be a bit inflated. But in a situation where you have a major league player and intensely coveted hi traffic keywords it’s worth looking at every conceivable piece of data.

  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool

  Mal Milligan’s last blog post..What is a SERP?

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• Yea, familiar with the tool but haven’t spent a huge amount of time on it. I’ll run some phrases through it. :)

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• I just have to chime on on the “cheap web hosting”. Having a strong marketing background, I was taught and never thought of ever using “cheap” to describe a product/service but rather to use “least expensive” or “lowest priced” with some other psychological triggers such as “highest quality” or “reliable”. You are right Laurence, the numbers are way too good. I optimized one of the sites on the first page of Google for both “cheap magazines” and “discount magazines” – and found “cheap magazines” to pull more traffic than “discount magazines”…it’s sad but true.

  It’s sort of like having to misspell a word to rank for the term in Google. Take for instance “medicolegal services” – Google actually suggests the wrong spelling (medico legal services) of the word. When in doubt, I would side with Google. I mean isn’t the ultimate goal to pull traffic?

  Also, just had my first guest blogger on Ponder Consulting today…check it out if you get a chance.

  Harmonie Ponder’s last blog post..Flash vs. Silverlight

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• Take your time with SEO. Don’t give up. Just keep building up your anchor text backlinks. Many people give up too early when in fact they just need a little bit of education on SEO.

  -Kai
  .-= Kai´s last blog ..SEO =-.

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