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Ken McGaffin, the Chief Marketing Officer of Wordtracker, discusses some of the most interesting trends in keyword research at SES London 2008. This includes the movement of SEO and keyword research skills to in-house professionals, which has generated a marked increase in demand for corporate training sessions.

Ken also reveals that journalists are starting to show interest in keyword research, given the necessity of getting their stories and multimedia content found in news search engines, video search engines and web search engines.

Ken McGaffin, Wordtracker keyword research, at SES London 2008

Picking the best keywords is at the heart of any online marketing campaign. Get them right, and you’ll get remarkable increases in search engine traffic. But you don’t have to guess what the best keywords are – tools like Wordtracker will tell you.

Wordtracker collects search data – the words real people use when they do real searches online. It analyzes and count these search phrases, and give users a variety of tools to use them in creative ways to bring relevant visitors to their websites.

With Wordtracker, you can optimize your websites organically, plan effective pay-per-click campaigns, identify niche markets, generate search engine-friendly content plans, choose memorable domain names, and choose new product and publication names. Wordtracker and other keyword research tools will help you dramatically increase the number of effective keywords in your online marketing strategy.

You can find more information on keyword strategy at the Wordtracker Academy, or by visiting their booth at SES New York 2008.

All new parents think their drooling, wailing, wrinkled little midget is beautiful - and that’s as it should be. The same seems to be true of landing pages. If an online marketing campaign is making money, it’s taken as proof the landing pages are beautiful–and don’t need further improvement.

In fact, landing pages typically range from barely acceptable to horrible. They are often at direct cross-purposes with the desired conversion action and stated goals of the business.

In this sorry state of affairs lies a terrific opportunity - fixing your landing pages can often lead to long-lasting double or even triple digit gains in conversion rate. This can change the economics of your business overnight.

Landing page optimization is no longer optional. It’s one of the core activities that all online marketers must pay serious attention to. Landing page optimization spans the important topics of usability, copywriting, web design, and information architecture.

But landing page optimization also requires a proper grounding in math and test design. The messy reality of real-time marketing rears its ugly head. Organizational considerations required to build a testing program are key. You may need to change the mindset within your company.

I’ve covered these topics and more in my recent book Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions (John Wiley Press 2008). The book even got a really nice unsolicited writeup from SES London Chair Mike Grehan in his How To Avoid A Crash Landing column (and I didn’t even have to pay a dime from the giant stash of payola money that I have available for such plugs).

I want to start a conversation and a revolution, but first we must break down the walls of denial:

Repeat after me: “My baby is ugly…”