I was catching up on my reading this morning and found a link to a new free keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker.

Apparently Yahoo! will be pulling down the current Overture tool and replacing it with a new one at some point in time; so far this WordTracker tool is getting some positive feedback - go ahead and give it a try right here:

If you were a personal chef in Toronto, how would you drive traffic to your website? I used the Overture Tool to do some keyword research which would shed light on how customers are searching for personal chefs - not just in Toronto but in general.

What I found is on par with what the search marketing industry is saying these days - people are searching local. Out of 68 phrases that people use when searching for a personal chef, 34 of those phrases involved a location such as Toronto or Ottawa as examples.

In almost all of the location based searches, the query went “personal chef location” such as “personal chef Los Angeles”. The locations were usually cities but there were a couple for countries (”Canada” and “American”). Ottawa was the one exception where people tend to search for “personal chef service in Ottawa” - the added word of service differentiates this query from the others.

What is the point here? If you are a personal chef with a website, it is incredibly important to optimize your site for the term personal chef along with the city you live in. Since there is not a great variety in the terms people use to find these services, you need to be in the top 5 for your targeted phrase. In a city like Ottawa, that may be possible - but what about Toronto? There are more than 5 personal chefs in Toronto so they can’t all be in the top 5 position of Google or any other search engine.

The answer? Get listed in the directories that appear for your targeted phrase. These directories include associations, local directories, yellow pages, ODP, Google Local and the list goes on. This is a fairly non competitive field compared to many other fields as many personal chefs do not even have websites!

Can’t get to #1? If you are stuck in position #10 right now, you likely do get some leads from your website. Follow up with these leads in a timely manner and you just may be setting yourself apart from your competition who may not return email at all!

Need help marketing your personal chef website? Contact us and see what we can work out in terms of payment :-)

WordTracker created a fictional dog food company, Virginia Veg, and asked experts to provide real answers to the problems facing its CEO, Susan Webster. The result is an e-book packed with insight, tips, and techniques on keyword research that you can apply easily to your own website. Contributors include:

• Bryan Eisenberg - Convert more traffic using Wordtracker.
• B. L. Ochman - Understand your customers’ real motivations.
• Kevin Lee - Combine thousands of phrases for an effective PPC campaign.
• Stephen Mahaney - Use Wordtracker to find the size of the market.
• Ken McGaffin - Discover the most important sites in your marketplace.
• John Alexander - Find inspiration in Wordtracker’s Top 1,000 Words report.
• Neil Davidson - Learn how an ad agency uses keyword research to position a client.
• Robin Good - Use Wordtracker to identify niche opportunities.
• Nick Usborne - Incorporate keywords into your content and copy.

The PDF is completely free of charge and can be downloaded at WordTracker!