Thanks
Jen

It's the toss up between trying to rank well on a well known keyword that you know people will look for ( in your case, Niagra Falls )
and ranking well on an obscure term that you hope folks will search on ( Buffalo Coupons ).

Hope this helps.

You might also try optimizing for specific merchant names if they have any name recognition in your area. That is, if someone searched for one of your merchants, "Prestige Jewelry", they might click on a site that offered "Discount coupons for Prestige Jewelry". Product categories might work, too. For example, if you have coupons for a jewelry store, "buffalo jewelry" might get a few hits (though some would be from people looking for, say, bison earrings...).

One other approach that might get more hits is to look for reciprocal links at other Western New York sites. If someone is at a Buffalo-oriented site, they are more likely to click on a link to "Big Buffalo Discounts" or something like that. Good luck - go Bills!

quote:

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Originally posted by SearchEngineGod:
As for the lack of traffic for "buffalo coupons", I think your problem may lie in the fact that due to their cloven-hooves, buffalo have a hard time using a keyboard - making their Internet use quite limited.

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TTThhhaaattt'''sss nnnooottt tttrrruuueee.

"Sorry! No-one has entered 'donkey engine' in 32 million searches."

You don't say?

[This message has been edited by Eathan (edited 05-02-2000).]

quote:

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Originally posted by russmatson:

Why would Goto be decieving? I look at the results month to month and for my keywords they are pretty consistant

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My understanding is that some GoTo results can get skewed because of all the search engine optimizers (like me) who use automated position-checking tools like WebPosition to run searches across GoTo and other engines.

Each tool search increments as a hit at GoTo thus affecting the results, especially for top phrases in highly competitive markets.

Each month the searches at GoTo GoUp , probably more in response to all the new optimizers running nightly position reports.

Wouldn't worry about it too much, it's still a good tool to have, but use with caution.

get real time popular search words you need to download first

If you want evidence that repetitive searches artifically inflate results, scroll down to the searches near the bottom of the list. On many searches, you will find a search term that clearly people are not typing in often, but it still has 30 hits in a month. Someone has obviously plugged the phrase into WPG for daily searches. Of course, if you are dealing with a competitive search term, who knows how many webmasters are running frequent checks, pumping up the Goto results each time.

This is the GoTo corrolary of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

One other bizarre thought - I wonder how many webmasters have screwed themselves by running frequent GoTo searches for an obscure keyword phrase. As the phrase rises in the GoTo suggestions, another webmaster, who has already created doorways for the common phrases, decides to create one for the same phrase as the first guy - and plugs it into WPG to see how it is doing. Pretty soon it is up to 60 searches a month and starting to attract other optimizers. Eventually, it becomes a highly competitive search phrase, and everyone in that category is trying to optimize for it... and is checking their rank... but nobody gets many hits...

THAT'S funny...!

I'm already sensing the faint thunder of hooves running up 'buffalo coupons' as we speak.