Keywords

Theme song: Digital Love

I love words.

Words are like candy to me.

If I could I would eat them all day long.

I would roll around in them naked as a jay in a bird bath, frisking and frolicking in the sun.

Since that is not practical in the "real world," I have a day job -- or maybe two.

I am, as you know, full time Super Mom and full time Digital Strategist.

I can not only leap piles of dirty shoes and overflowing backpacks in a single bound, I can reach into the machine and find the words that people like you use to find people like me -- online.

If you type "super mom" into your Google search box I come up as the first result.

Just kidding.

Here's the part that's not a joke:

I do, in fact, get paid to research keywords for business owners who want to increase their visibility online, drive traffic to their websites and generate leads (sales talk for "find potential customers") to build their businesses.

The end result is that I get paid to immerse myself in words.

It's different, though, than a bird in a birdbath.

It's more like a deep sea diver with an oxygen tank.

A whole lot more like that.

Doing keyword research using Google's keyword planner and other tools, people like me dive into the depths of a simulated, data-driven sea of human hopes, aspiration, puzzlement, desire and aversion.

It's dark and beautiful down here -- you never know what you'll find or whether you will emerge the same as you were when first you slipped into this densely airy space.

This work requires oxygen because the environment -- a computer screen and a flickering, radiating digital dashboard, is not actually fit for humans.

We sit in chairs, on beds or in coffee shops and we go deep.

We sift through thousands of words to find the ones that will get you found.

People want to know:

"am i fat"

"fancy food san francisco"

"where is best gay nightlife"

But what are they really looking for? What do they really want?

Every time a human asks a question (makes a query), Google (and other search engines) records that question.

Human hope becomes data.

Data can be bought.

Desire becomes commodity (but we knew that).

People like me choose and sort words that lead people like me (and you) to products and services that (temporarily) slake desire.

Your Turn

Questions? Queries? Please leave them in the comments.