Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

A casserole of a day
Today was a day with a lot mixed into it. Picking up bits and pieces, mostly. So tonight's entry will have a lot of those leftovers tossed into it. Here's a couple of spoonfuls. You're welcome to take it with or without salt.

There's nothing like keyword research to give you a sense of what your audience needs
I spent a lot of time today manually tweaking the keyword research I've been doing for this site. As much as I love Wordtracker for my keyword research, I don't think I've ever found a tool whose results I didn't want to modify or combine with the results of some other tool. I've developed, over the years, some extra data I like to pull out of Google to help me interpret my Wordtracker results.

And with the 1000 keyword list I had developed, that meant a lot of keyword-by-keyword searches to gather that information. But spending the time going from my Wordtracker results to Google and back again so many times really helped me get a feel for what people are looking for.

I found that many of the promotional aspects, such as linking, newsletters, and such, are barely in the minds of searchers. Apparently, they do little searching for these things, but take the recommendations of those whose articles make them aware of the needs for them.

But where there's a tremendous hunger is in the area of search engine optimization. As many people as have gotten into the field, there's still a desperate search going on for better search engine rankings.

The other trend that jumped out at me was the hunger for service. Many of the keywords that were generic in nature were pretty well saturated by competing websites. But when you added the word "service" to those keywords, they turned to gold in terms of demonstrating an unmet need.

There are plenty of information sites (including way too many that posted nothing but recycled search engine results or long lists of ads), but lots of searchers are looking for a more human touch in solving their problems.

In all, a pretty interesting encounter with the collective mind of searchers.

Looking for structure
Another chunk of day went to reviewing a new (to me, at least) product, Clickin' It Rich. The latest update of it came out a couple of months ago, but I finally picked it up because of one of its new features, a 30-page report in which author Michael Campbell details two strategies he would use if he were to start from scratch today to build a successful online business. Excellent reading and very well organized!

I'm looking to do an article soon to help people choose the business-building course that best suits their personality. Clickin' It Rich certainly fits well for someone who likes to work from a broad overview. It very clearly and concisely relates what steps to take, but works in broad strokes, offering links to other tools that can fill in the details on any steps that the reader wants more info on.

Enough of the casserole already
There were other bits and pieces tossed into my day as well, but I see that this entry is already getting long, so I'd best end it before the whole thing gets too big to digest. Good night and bon appetit!
Jeff