SEO using the Contextual Targeting Tool

The wonders of the wonderful Wonder Wheel.

The Google Wonder Wheel disappeared some time ago but thanks to this article

It’s Official: Google Wonder Wheel is Back, and It’s Called the Contextual Targeting Tool [Tutorial]

by Glen Gabe at G-Squared Interactive writes a great piece introducing the Google Contextual Targeting Tool and mentions that the Wonder Wheel has become the Contextual Targeting Tool in Adwords. 

How to Optimize Citations using the Contextual Targeting Tool:

Glen gives a great intro on how to drill down using the tool so I recommend reading his article for that aspect.  Once done with that click back here and continue reading.

Once you've drilled down into the keywords that you're targeting you'll see that many of the related keyterms don't quite fit what you do specifically but here is the trick... Google finds them relevant!

Remember the Wonder Wheel, which gave a visual interface, is now only textual (which for me was ideal as I'm a visual person).  It showed citations and if any of you drilled down further into Wonder Wheel you would have seen that there didn't need to be a link with anchortext but also a quantity of citations and relevance.  So if the same engine runs the CTT as ran the Wonder Wheel then we're looking at the same results... not all of those keywords are based on links but on citations. 

So taking keywords that are suggested as relevant means that you can do the following:

• Take those keywords, whether directly applicable to you or not, and use them (in addition to the main keywords) in off-site content (posts, articles, etc) that link back to your site or mention your site/brand.
• Use that content on your site by making it fit into what you do somehow.  By using those really relevant keywords (according to Google) on your site you're increasing your relevance to the target keywords.  Remember my example using Pet Shop Boys?
• Post on those types of sites:  Take those keywords that Google finds most relevant and feed them into Google's Search and find sites upon which to post and contribute along with your site/brand's mention with/out link.
• Link to those posts from your site:  Find highly relevant sites and cite them with a link to them.  Outbound links are incredibly relevant and helpful and most people think you need to just obtain inbound links... this is not true.  Outbound links with relevant linktext to relevant pages (and highly cited pages) mean that you're showing Google that you're relevant to the destination page's subject matter.  Click here to read about Outbound Linking for Co-citation Optimization.

So, who says you you need to obtain backlinks and stuff the anchortext with keywords?  Now you can find keywords that are relevant according to Google and use those.  You can include those keywords in your site's content and on off-site comments and you can link to resources that focus on those keywords.

It's all about building a web of relevance and keeping your site as the spider at the center.

Happy SEOing and don't forget to cite us!