Brainstormer
The Joy of Brainstorming
In the "real" world, brainstorming can be an intensive, draining process. And that's the easy part!
The research that follows is tedious. And finally, storing and analyzing all of the data makes brainstorming and researching look like child's play.
SBI!'s Brainstormer makes the whole process a joy.
Keyword brainstorming generates keywords based upon a "seed." You enter a Seed Word and Brainstormer delivers you related keywords. These keywords will become topics ("Keyword-Focused Content Pages") in your Web site.
Brainstorm Seed Words (shortened to just Seed Words) are words that you are considering using as potential Site Concepts (initially), or for broad subsections of your site (after you have chosen your Site Concept). We call the keyword that you enter into Brainstormer when performing a Vertical Brainstorm or a Lateral Brainstorm a "Seed Word" because it "seeds" a storm of keywords.
You will research the Seed Words in Step 3 of the Brainstormer process. In the Master Keyword List, each of the Seed Words you researched will appear in the Seed Word drop-down menu, along with All, which shows every keyword regardless of Seed Word, and Added Keywords, which shows all unassociated keywords.
Keyword: The term a surfer enters into a Search Engine when searching for something. These would be words like...
"Anguilla" and "Anguilla villas" and "Caribbean vacations."
(The term "keyword" includes single words as well as multi-word phrases. Most searches are not actually single-word searches. Why? Because most searchers quickly learn to enter two or more words in their searches in order to get better (more precise) results. We call that entry a "keyword" even if it has 5 words in it.)
A keyword is also the topic for the content of a Web page. All the other words on that page are "content"... information about that keyword/topic.
We call the keyword that you make the topic of a Web page the Specific Keyword for that page.
If you'd like more information about keywords, click here.
Tip for Best Results
Firefox is 20 times faster than Internet Explorer for brainstorming and a few times faster when site-building...
Brainstormer is the best keyword brainstorming and researching tool in the world.
Click-click...
It's that easy. Just follow the 3 STEPs...
STEP 1 Select a Brainstormer Function
STEP 2 Select a Brainstormer Resource
STEP 3 Enter your Seed Word(s) (or select an existing one if you're using the Ultimate Outside Lateralizer)
We refer to a Brainstorm It! 2-step combination of Function and Resource (also called a "brainstorm" or a "query") in the following format...
Function (STEP 1) > Resource (STEP 2)
For example...
Vertical Brainstorm > Site Concept Finder
(We omit STEP 3 from this format since a Seed Word is required for all brainstorms.)
Important Tip
You'll find helpful information about each brainstorm in the gray box to the right of STEPs 1 and 2 (and sometimes STEP 3).
The Big Picture Plan
There are two types of brainstorming Functions: Vertical and Lateral. Each has several different Resources (queries) available.
Vertical brainstorming generates keywords that contain the Seed Word (ex., if you enter "anguilla," all brainstormed keywords will contain "anguilla").
Lateral brainstorming generates keywords that are related to the Seed Word but do not contain it (ex., if you enter "anguilla," a lateral word is "caribbean island").
You don't need to use all the brainstorms to determine your Site Concept Keyword. During DAY 2, you choose your Site Concept, or niche, using...
Vertical Brainstorm > Site Concept Finder
(You may also need to use the Singular AND Plural and/or the Singular OR Plural brainstorms if you decide that you can eliminate one or more of the original 3 Seed Words during the DAY 2 process.)
The Master Keyword List (MKL) automatically shows the Value Demand and the Real Supply and the resulting Profitability (Demand/Supply x 1000 = Profitability) for all brainstormed keywords (up to 333 keywords for each of 3 Seed Words, or up to 500 keywords for each of 2 Seed Words, or up to 800 keywords for 1 Seed Word).
Value Demand is a combination of how often people search for a particular keyword and how monetizable or commercial that keyword is. The best words (i.e., the highest Value Demand) have a high search volume and are highly commercial.
This measure of Demand is called "Value Demand" because it both provides a better estimate of Demand and includes a reflection of how important the Demand for each keyword is, in terms of its commercial potential. More on this below.
Real Supply is a score for a keyword that indicates how competitive that keyword is, compared to the others in your Master Keyword List. It provides a rough idea of how difficult it will be to rank in the Top 10 at the Search Engines.
The higher the number, the more competitive the situation. This measure of Supply is called "Real Supply" because it provides a true evaluation of competition for each keyword. More on this below.
Based on the keywords generated for the three Seed Words, along with their Value Demand and Real Supply, you choose your best Site Concept. Then, during DAY 3, you add more related keywords, or sub-topics, using...
Lateral Brainstorm > Lateral Brainstormer
Then fine tune and side-branch your Site Concept by adding more keywords with...
Vertical Brainstorm > Singular AND Plural, or
Vertical Brainstorm > Singular OR Plural
These simple 3 brainstorms during DAYs 2 and 3 give you an excellent list of vertical and lateral keywords for your Site Concept Keyword, complete with Value Demand, Real Supply and Profitability... everything you need to start and develop your site's Content Blueprint.
As you become more familiar with Brainstorm It!, you'll develop a "feel" for this powerful tool. You'll use each of the resources as you need it. For example...
Perhaps a new niche develops, one with profit potential (ex., "Anguilla condos"). You might decide to do a Lateral Brainstormer on that term first, analyze and delete some terms in the Master Keyword List, and then decide what other Brainstormer resources to use to build up this interesting new profit center.
Bottom line... there is no "forced order" to use the resources. Ultimately, it's your tool. But the simple three steps above do tend to yield the most gold!
Important Caveat: Human Brain Required!
The Brainstormer saves weeks of brainstorming, and the MKL saves weeks of analysis. The keywords and data will turn into a complete blueprint for your site. But be aware...
Computers gather and report all this data. Computers don't think. Weird words creep in. Bots (automated programs) and page spammers can skew Demand and Supply.
Brainstorm It! performs tremendously complicated and useful tasks. The keywords themselves are precious and the numbers are useful, if considered as guidance to think about and not as "commands to follow." Remember...
BI! does not have a brain. It merely shows you what it finds. If something appears weird or wrong, it probably is. Why?
Because you can think. Brainstorm It! is terrific and gets better and better as online resources improve. But heed this advice...
Do not base major decisions on data unless it makes sense.
Right now, only humans can think.
If you're having trouble making sense of brainstorming results, "help and be helped" at the Brainstorm It! forum.
A final note about words with apostrophes...
If you brainstorm "women's golf," you will have an excellent MKL for "womens golf" (no apostrophe). Reinsert the apostrophe when you write your content (after running Analyze It!). The engines will deal with it all correctly.
Vertical Brainstorming
"Vertical Brainstorming" generates keywords that contain the Seed Word. For example, if you enter "anguilla," all brainstormed words will contain "anguilla" in them (ex., "anguilla villas," "anguilla real estate").
The first Vertical brainstorm, which you'll use on DAY 2, is the...
Vertical Brainstorm > Site Concept Finder
Site Concept Finder
- STEP 1 Select Vertical Brainstorm.
- STEP 2 Select Site Concept Finder.
- Read the help in the gray box on the right.
- STEP 3 Enter your Seed Word(s).
- Click on the Brainstorm It! button to start your brainstorm.
This brainstorm researches up to 3 Seed Words simultaneously. You will only see it if you have not yet registered your domain name and if you have fewer than 250 keywords in your MKL.
- If you enter 3 Seed Words, Brainstormer will bring back up to 333 keywords for each Seed.
- If you enter 2, you'll receive up to 500 keywords for each Seed Word.
- If you enter only 1 Seed Word, you'll receive up to 800 keywords (the maximum Brainstorm It! will return for a single brainstorm).
Why did we set it up this way? So that you don't have to run three separate Vertical brainstorms, then prune enough keywords after each brainstorm to allow room in your MKL to do the next query.
You can search for the singular or plural form of each Seed Word by entering that form of the word into the text box in STEP 3. Or you can search for the singular and plural forms at the same time by entering the singular form in the text box in STEP 3, then adding a check in the checkbox to the right of the word.
In the screenshot above, the Site Concept Finder will bring back keywords for "dog," "dogs," "cat," "cats" and "gecko." In the Seed Word menu, however, you'll see only "dog," "cat" and "gecko."
The Site Concept Finder brings back the highest Demand keywords (the Wordtracker tool normally brings back up to 1,000 keywords for each query), automatically pruning all the lower Demand words. This relieves you of the tedium of having to go through 800-1,000 words, adding a check to each of the worst 667, and then deleting all the checked words.
To determine your Site Concept, simply run this brainstorm following the Directions for Use above and start comparing your 3 possible themes in the Master Keyword List.
Wordtracker
The Vertical Brainstorms use Wordtracker (a third-party paid service) to start the keyword brainstorming process. Wordtracker maintains a database of 300+ million searches from major Meta Search Engines such as DogPile.
What you'll use in Brainstormer is the full, paid Wordtracker database, the same one that costs US$299/year.
We pay Wordtracker per query to integrate their data into ours and deliver unique results. We pay for your initial balance of 25 free Wordtracker credits, which is normally more than enough to select and fully brainstorm a Site Concept Keyword.
The Site Concept Finder brainstorm costs 3 credits (one per Seed Word) (and the Singular AND Plural and the Singular OR Plural queries each cost 1 credit), even if a specific Seed Word generates no data -- so be careful of typos and long keyword phrases (longer than 2 words). After your balance reaches zero, you can buy a Wordtracker package very inexpensively.
This data will form the Content Blueprint for your entire site, so don't hesitate to use these important brainstorms. Buy an additional Wordtracker package, if necessary. Since we pay Wordtracker to provide this service, it can't be free. But it is cheap...
• $20 for a Wordtracker 100 Query Package (20 cents per query).
• $50 for a Wordtracker 500 Query Package (10 cents per query).
500 queries will last you forever for your site.
How do you know how many Wordtracker queries you have left? The brainstorms that use Wordtracker show the Wordtracker balance in the gray section on the right of the Brainstormer tool page. For example...
The next two Vertical brainstorms are ones you may use on DAY 2 if one of your potential Site Concepts does not make the cut. You may also use them on Day 3 to grow the list of keywords related to your niche.
Vertical Brainstorm > Singular AND Plural
Vertical Brainstorm > Singular OR Plural
Singular AND Plural
Singular AND Plural is for keywords that have both a singular and a plural form. If you'd like keywords using both forms, use this search. If you want only keywords using either singular or plural, use the Singular OR Plural brainstorm.
- STEP 1 Select Vertical Brainstorm.
- STEP 2 Select Singular AND Plural or Singular OR Plural.
- Read the help in the gray box on the right.
- STEP 3 Enter your Seed Word.
- Click on the Brainstorm It! button to start the brainstorm.
Enter the singular form of the word when using this brainstorm. The system will automatically search for the singular and the plural forms of the word.
Singular OR Plural
Singular OR Plural is for words that don't have a plural form (ex., mumps), don't have a singular form of the same word (ex., mouse is the singular form of mice), or have different meanings for the "plural" form (ex., pant and pants).
This brainstorm is useful if you want to focus your site only on the singular, or plural, of a keyword.
Enter either the singular or plural form of the word when using this brainstorm. The system will only search for this form of the word.
There is also a fourth Vertical brainstorm, which you'll have access to after you reach the 30 Page Milestone.
Ultimate Verticalizer
This brainstorm uses the "collective wisdom" of the entire Web and SBI!. Every keyword in the world that contains your Site Concept Keyword is discovered and returned to you with additional data.
Lateral Brainstorming
"Lateral Brainstorming," which you'll use on DAY 3, generates keywords that are related to the Seed Word but do not contain it (ex., if you enter "anguilla," examples of lateral words are "caribbean island" and "travel" and "Barbados").
The first Lateral brainstorm, which you will use on DAY 3, is...
Lateral Brainstorm > Lateral Brainstormer
Lateral Brainstormer
- STEP 1 Select Lateral Brainstorm.
- STEP 2 Select Lateral Brainstormer.
- Read the help in the gray box on the right.
- STEP 3 Enter your Seed Word.
- Click on the Brainstorm It! button to start the brainstorm.
You have a choice. You could spend hours, if not days, dreaming up hundreds of keywords/topics related to a certain Seed Word. Brainstorming is hard work. Once you've thought of the obvious, it's not easy.
Or you could let others do it for you! Not just "others," actually, but some of the "smartest others" (those who get their sites into the Top 200 results at Google!).
The Lateral Brainstormer calls the top 200 URLs from Google (the best-ranking Web pages for your Seed Word), then does all the rest. It sends "GoGetIt" (Brainstorm It!'s spider) to those URLs.
GoGetIt spiders through those 200 Web pages and gets the keywords that those pages use in their META keywords tag (keywords that their Webmasters think up and include on the home page of their sites). GoGetIt brings them all back to Brainstormer.
Brainstormer then analyzes the words, keeping the ones that appear most frequently and running an algorithm to deliver the best of the "one-ofs" (eliminating most of the nonsense words). It then presents them to you in your Master Keyword List for this brainstorm. You'll see many new lateral keywords.
The process takes a few minutes. But it's worth the wait.
It's like 200 people working for you... for free!
Which Is More Important? Vertical or Lateral?
Vertical. The words are directly relevant. Lateral takes you in good, new directions and can help you in many ways, as described.
But let's say you have 275 juicy "vertical words" after pruning. You'd hate to bring it any lower. Should you cut to "make room" for Lateral keywords?
No. The Lateral Brainstormer will "fill to 1,000."
The second Lateral brainstorm you can use on DAY 3 is...
Lateral Brainstorm > Ultimate Outside Lateralizer
Ultimate Outside Lateralizer
The Ultimate Outside Lateralizer brings back keywords from the top 200 sites for searches at Yahoo!.
- STEP 1 Select Lateral Brainstorm.
- STEP 2 Select Ultimate Outside Lateralizer.
- Read the help in the gray box on the right.
- STEP 3 Select your Seed Word from the drop-down menu of existing Seed Words.
- Click on the Brainstorm It! button to start the brainstorm.
- Follow the instructions in the e-mail you will receive to examine and prune the keywords, then upload the keywords you want to keep into your MKL.
If you're just starting SBI!, this is an optional brainstorm. Use it...
- if you want to be really complete, or
- if your Lateral Brainstormer query seemed a bit lean, or
- before you give up on a Site Concept Keyword you really like!
If you're an SBI! veteran, use it when you need more ideas.
The Ultimate Outside Lateralizer is so named because it also brings back keywords from 10-12 sites that are related to each of those first 200 sites, for a grand total of keywords from (up to) 2,500 sites (including the original 200).
The "related" search allows the brainstormer to get very wide indeed, going farther afield than a straight search. For example, a search for "anguilla" will certainly bring back the Anguilla government's site among the Top 200. Sites related to that might include sites of the governments of other Caribbean islands.
How would you feel if you had to review 2,500 sites and pluck out the keywords related to your Seed Word? Exactly! The Ultimate Outside Lateralizer does that for you instead.
The Ultimate Outside Lateralizer is very intensive. GoGetIt goes to all 2,500 sites and brings back the META keywords just like it did for the Lateral Brainstormer. It eliminates all the words that you already have in your MKL, since there's no point in seeing those again.
GoGetIt then e-mails the entire keyword list to you, as an attachment, along with each keyword's Real Supply.
Since this process visits up to 2,500 sites, expect a fairly large number of keywords, even though it excludes all the keywords that are already in your MKL.
GoGetIt e-mails this list to prevent you from going over your 1,000 keyword limit. The e-mail goes to your address on record in your "My Account" section of SBI!. Click on the Change login or e-mail link in the top right corner of Brainstorm It! (or the My Account link at the top of Site Central if you're already building your site). Make sure that your e-mail address is up-to-date.
Follow the tips in the e-mail and keep the best keywords. There will be many words of little value due to the nature of this brainstorm and the goal to be completed. But you'll find some surprisingly useful "needles in the haystack."
You'll receive the list as an attached comma-separated text file (".csv" or CSV). Examine it at your convenience, following the tips included in that e-mail. This makes it easy for you to pick-and-choose which keywords to keep. You upload only the "good ones," avoiding the 1,000 keyword limit. Follow the instructions in the e-mail to upload them.
There is also a third Lateral Brainstorm, called the Ultimate Inside Lateralizer, which you'll be able to use when you reach the 30 Page Milestone.
Ultimate Inside Lateralizer
This brainstorm looks "inside" your site and brings back all of the keywords (it can be thousands!) that have "found" your site, along with how often they find you and what the Real Supply is for those keywords.
And here's an important point. As you create more and more content, thereby "using up" all of the keywords generated by the other brainstorms, and as your traffic builds and builds, the Ultimate Inside Lateralizer finds more and more interesting keywords for you.
Yes... the more traffic you generate, the more great little keywords it delivers. At this point, your site is still young and if you are not yet getting more than 50 or so visitors per day, the results may be sparse. But as that snowball grows, you will find this tool yields more and more results.
Wrapping Up
By the time you complete the highly recommended brainstorming process on DAYs 2 and 3, your Content Blueprint for your chosen Site Concept should be forming in your mind.
The order in which you complete the brainstorms is not fixed. You can vary the process and customize it as much as you like, as long as you ultimately (i.e., at the end of DAY 5) end up with your three all-important goals...
- your Site Concept finalized and fine-tuned
- your Valuable PREselling Proposition and Voice, and
- your 3-tier keyword structure/Content Blueprint.
After you finish brainstorming and start building your site, return to Brainstorm It! periodically. Yes, even when your site has 500 pages and is a Top 1% site...
The world changes. Your niche changes. New keywords and opportunities, not to mention new directions, will occur. And Brainstorm It! will be right here for you, with the Ultimate Verticalizer, the Ultimate Inside Lateralizer, and all the other Brainstormer queries.