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Keywords and optimization

After content creation and presentation one of the most critical steps on the path to effective search engine promotion is the identification of the language people use to search for the material you have to offer.

I use the Wordtracker service which analyses a database of keywords used recently on some search engines. From this they estimate the volume of potential queries per day per keyword. Importantly they also check the level of competition on those keywords on the target search engines. It is all about identifying niches and going all out for them - the delicate judgments are around just how far you push the requirements of the robots over the expectations of visitors for intelligibility and decent English. Let's hope it's not too blatant this time - it is easy to get carried away if you are not careful. It is only in this way that new and smaller sites have any chance of establishing themselves on the vital first two results pages of any search.

Now that we have built a decent amount of content (70+ hifi tracks with associated lofi clips) and can see where we are going with the rest of the classical composers it was time this week to look again at our targeting so that we can refocus the site and start building decent volumes of traffic - to get our music heard.

As a by product you can get a fascinating insight into the relative popularity of particular composers and particular pieces - I suppose the huge sites with their vast archives get even better data from their web traffic analysis and purchases by their users but it may be a bit biased by the characteristics of their specific audience.

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