Wordtracker is website that offers keyword analysis services which provide you with valuable SEO information.

If your web site sells coffee makers, then you can use Wordtracker to find out which phrases people are typing into search engines around the topic of coffee makers. Of course you can apply the Wordtracker tool to any market you happen to be in.

When you set up a web site you will want to optimise it for search engine traffic. You’ll be doing this to maximise the chances of your site appearing in the search results when people are searching for your products or services.

But What Do People Type?

But what do people type when they are looking for coffee makers? What would you type in, if you were looking to buy a coffee maker? If you don’t know the answers to this question, your web site (featuring coffee makers) won’t do as well as it could.  Using Wordtracker I have found out that people type the following phrases when look for coffee makers.

• bunn coffee makers
• best coffee makers
• coffee maker reviews
• one cup coffee maker
• single cup coffee makers
• vacuum coffee makers
• coffee maker ratings
• braun coffee maker

The point being that if your site only uses the words coffee maker, and does not include the phrases listed above (there are 100s more by the way, I just listed a few), then your site is in competition with all the other sites that only use the phrase coffee maker.

However if you make sure you address all topics suggested by the other phrases in the list, your site will be half way to doing better in the search engines than other sites that perhaps don’t use the full phrases that people are searching for.

This is what Wordtracker does – it tells you the key phrases people are currently using to find the things you sell.

How Is Wordtracker Sold?

Wordtracker is available on a monthly subscription. You can find out more about it by reading the articles at the Wordtracker Academy.

You can sign up for a free trial and test it out before deciding to buy.  Or, you can use the Free Wordtracker Tool which provides a limited but useful version of the service.

Advantages of Using Wordtracker

Most people simply don’t bother to properly optimise their web sites. You’ll be doing more than 95% of the sites out there if you get properly involved in keyword research. This will help you to :

• Discover new niche markets
• Find the most profitable keywords in current use
• Beat the competition

All you need is a Google Account and you are set. Just go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and log in using your existing Google account, or create an account if you don’t have one.

Once you have logged in you can add all your web sites to the Tools dashboard.  You can then verify each of the sites belongs to you by uploading a special file to the root directory of each web site, or by modifying the home page to include a special META tag. Full instructions are given as soon as you add a new site.

Your Google Webmaster Account Will . . .

• Indicate the number site pages included in the Google index
• Allow you to specify a XML sitemap to help Google locate all your pages
• Allow you to remove pages any that are in the index, but shouldn’t be there
• List any pages that are specified in the site map but not found
• Tell you about any internal links on your site that couldn’t be found
• List any duplicate meta descriptions (not good as these are the first indication of a duplicate page)
• Mention any meta descriptions and title tags that are either too long or too short
• Lists any title tags it thinks are totally useless
• Tells you about content Google tried to index but couldn’t
• List the top search engine queries used to find your site in the Google SERPs AND the position you were at in Google’s SERPs for those queries, AND the ones people actually clicked
• Tell you what Googlebot sees when he looks at your site – i.e. does your site have a real theme according to Googlebot.
• Lists all the anchor text used to link to your site – i.e how others see you. Very important as this is also consequently part of how Google sees you.
• A graph of the pagerank of your site’s pages in Google
• Any subscribers to your feed via Google Reader
• A list of all pages with external linsk pointing to them, and how many links each has
• A list of all internal links (now you might wonder why this is interesting – it is because Google has mentioned it here so get internally linking)
• The date of the last time your sitemap.xml file was downloaded.
• A chance to notify Google of the existence of a sitemap.xml file. If you haven’t got a sitemap.xml, get one.
• Ability to use a number of small tools to further enhance Googlebot’s willingness to peruse your site.
• The code to add a Webmaster Tools Gadget to your home page.

And One Last Point

Finally, copiously scattered around Google Webmaster tools pages are links saying thing like “How to Use this data”. Click those links, they contain precious clues.