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Great - Thanks! Much appreciated!

Thank you two for the answers but I didn't realize one simple thing. The google adword tool is mainly for well....Adwords. The keywords are probably highly competitive in terms of CPC and the number of people vying for them. I was doing organic ranking research. This is why I was confused as to why the keywords were "highly competitive" but an opensite analysis of the top 10 would show that they had very little page authority or good if at all backlinks. The sites that would show up would be the manufactorers or an ebay page or something like that!

Many thanks you, I wonder why the web title on Google Search Result focus is "Zing" (highlight text in image above), Google is wrong ?

examplecasino.co.nz? You get your brand and keyword in one??

We don't have a way to clear old reports, but the most recent reports should show at the the top of the screen. If this isn't the case for you, could you contact the help team at http://www.seomoz.org/help and they'll help figure out what's going on. Thanks!

Thanks for your input.  I can see SEO really is an ongoing thing that you finetune. Unfortunately I don't think I can track conversions as I don't sell direct, I can get as far as "prospect" (i.e. when someone clicks through to a retailer where my book can be bought).  I can't compete with Amazon and other retailers for their free delivery and worldwide reach, so I link to retailers who buy them wholesale from me and they sell my products. I'm new to this so I don't have any real data. If at best I can rely on "prospect" I think I will calculate my costs for minimum 1% conversion on all marketing on the assumption that all are from within prospects %, and work my way up from there.  I have already sold 100 copies with pracitally no marketing so that's a good sign I guess. Have yet to sort out webmaster tools as I thought it would be best to do my on page first. Good point about profit vs conversion rate, I have a losing BingYahoo! PPC campaign at the moment (probably downsizing or closing down soon) and have thought it would be better if I sold Motorbikes and Mopeds or maybe Ferarris and Yatchs rather than books on PPC !

If you know you've got other people's stuff on your site then get it off.  Emanuel penalizes sites that have repeated DMCA takedown requests. But I highly doubt this is Emanuel. You may be confusing Emanuel and Panda.  Panda is about poor quality content...but there was no Panda update on August 3rd, plus a Panda update would drop you way lower than #3!!! My main site varies between #1 and #3 for it's main keyword all the time.  And it's not because I have a penalty.

Thanks. That was helpful.

Understood, thanks!

yep... Adwords discussions generally center around keywords and budgets... if the bidder is not diligently tracking margins, costs, conversions and bidding my bet is that he is losing his shirt and doesn't know it. Lots of people who are doing that math quit doing Adwords because they discover that the competition is insane.

Ryan- Within Adwords you can do a search for traffic on each of those terms. You can also do it within SEOMOZ's keyword research tool. This will give you an exact match figure for monthly search for global and local. Then when you work through the writing the blog, you can use the item that is most searched as the title and heading and you can use some of the other terms within the article that are searched in 2nd and 3rd place, in the main content of the article, so that the articloe doesn't look like you are keyword stuffing. Good luck. Hope this helps.. Mark

I think Rankerizer - http://www.rankerizer.com/ - does a pretty good job of tracking your ranking for multiple keywords. And you can easily export results into a CSV file.

I've always felt that you're better off having a branded domain rather than a keyword stuffed domain just for the sake of having keywords in it. The slight SEO advantage you may or may not gain is not worth it in the long run compared to being able to build a strong brand.

That information applies to advertising, not SEO. If you are seeking a tool to help you understand organic keyword difficulty, you can try the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool What you need to understand most is even the best SEO tools only have value when used by someone who fully understands the process (i.e. can perform the task without the tool) and fully understands how the tool operates. In addition, the person needs to have experience using the process and tool to gain the most value. As a direct result of good SEO techniques, small businesses have moved out of their homes and into offices then grown into mid-sized businesses. Mid-sized businesses have grown into large businesses, and large businesses have increased sales by millions. SEO is a big field. There are single domains which have sold for millions of dollars. There are sites which have cost millions of dollars to build. If you want to start learning SEO, an excellent place is here: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo Beyond that, it takes a lot of time and dedication. I have been involved with SEO on various levels for years and I still learn every week.

I use Long Tail Pro for keyword research. You enter in 5 keywords and it uses the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to generate literally thousands of related keyword phrases which you can filter and analyze by search volume and organic competitiveness. Click on a keyword phrase and you get an in-depth analysis of the top 10 organic competitors so you can determine how easy or difficult it would be to make it on the first page of Google. It's by far my favorite keyword research tool, especially for finding great long tail phrases to target with blog posts.

Thanks Keri. A lot of the work I do is where I "localize" search because I work with small businesses. Then one day I heard someone mention "globalizing" search results but no matter what I did with my chrome browser it always seemed to know where I was so even if the results were different I suspected I really wasn't seeing global results. Your answer was right on the money. Thanks.

Not necessarily they are different searches. Global numbers are an estimate of how many people search for that term worldwide, however Google.com is not the same as Google.co.uk they are different Google search engines for different continents.

You can make all the changes that SEOmoz suggests, but at the end of the day so much of your ranking in Google still comes down to how important they think you are. While SEO is vital, requirements for having a top ranking site hasn't changed in years: who is linking to your content, how much weight do those sites carry, and how good is your content? Next to that you have to look at who you're competing against.

I agree with all the great responses here. Just make sure when you do your keyword research on the Google Keyword Tool or Elsewhere, Choose Exact Match to get a good read on the data. Keyword Competition [image: clear.cache.gif]Local Monthly Searches <a class="sOL">[san antonio wedding photographers]</a> High 480 <a class="sOL">[san antonio wedding photographer]</a> High 320