How to be a Freelance Writer

SEO Conferences are a Great Way to Stay in Touch with Changing SEO Trends and Stats

While there are many reasons for SEO writers to attend regular SEO conferences, one of the biggest reasons is so that they can keep track of the ever-changing search engine optimization strategies and stats. Last week at the SMX Search Marketing Expo, Bill Tancer-  from Hitwise - revealed that short search terms (1-2 terms) are decreasing while longer search terms (4-5 words) are increasing in popularity.

According to Trancer, four-word queries have increased by 12% and five-word quueries have increased by 16% since 2007. Shorter queries, including three-word queries, are down.

Here are some stats that Trancer shared at the conference, which I gleaned from the super-informative site Small Business Search Marketing:

Words/Query	2009	2008	2007
1 word		20.4%	21.1%	24.5%
2 words		23.6%	24.9%	25.7%
3 words		21.8%	21.9%	20.7%
4 words		14.9%	14.5%	13.3%
5 words		8.7%	8.2%	7.5%

What does this mean for SEO writers? It means that as you develop your list of keywords (or review your client’s list), aim to create a list of keyword phrases rather than a list of single keywords. Make sure that all of the words in the phrase are appropriate for your topic. One way to determine which keywords are most appropriate for your topic is to look to see what keywords are often associated with your topic using keyword popularity calculators such as Yahoo’s Overture tool, Google Zeitgeist, or Ask IQ.