• If you have an old site you should use analytics to track what keywords you are getting traffic for. For most webmasters it is easier to rank for more related keywords than it is to discover and dominate new areas.
• When you start a new site make sure you use keyword modifiers in your page titles, meta descriptions, and page copy. It is easier to rank for long tail terms than shorter search queries.
• You can find many keyword modifier types in this free XLS spreadsheet.
• When you start doing keyword research, you can start with a seed list of broad keywords to power a keyword tool and keep digging deeper. Then repeat the process with related keywords and other keyword tools. No tool is perfect. Think of them more as qualitative than quantitative. I like Wordtracker and my keyword tool.
• Organize your keywords into relevant baskets of keywords and modifiers that should be covered in different sections of your site and on different pages from your site.
• I listed many bonus keyword research ideas in a recent Wordtracker article.
• Some of my favorite follow up keyword tools to use when optimizing a page are
  • Quintura – shows a visual layout of related keywords
  • Google AdWords tool – shows you what keywords Google thinks a URL is relevant for and should be advertising on
  • Compete.com Search Analytics – shows keywords that competing sites rank for

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The company has yet to name an exact amount, but Mashable’s Pete Cashmore puts the figure at “several million.”  That money comes courtesy of Mangrove Capital Partners, which the Quintura blog has thanked for funding on one other occasion.

As for where Quintura will go from here, a member of the StartupSquad writes, “Quintura’s longer terms plans for the funds include building the Quintura affiliate model for site search and building a semantic web index using their neural networking techniques.  Quintura will shortly offer an affiliate model for web-sites and blogs to replace a site map with a Quintura interactive cloud for site search and navigation.”

That all sounds pretty impressive (indeed, the phrase “neural networking techniques” makes it seem like Quintura’s got a Vulcan in its ranks).  But one potential stumbling block could be the company’s plans to introduce “Quintura for Women.”  If that site shows up in shades of pink and purple, it could become more of an insult than a search aid.

Still, Quintura’s been getting generally positive reviews for some time now, so the company is probably on the right track.  Its “cloud” of search results is still too messy for my tastes, but it’s hard to argue with actions that earn millions of dollars.

This doesn’t qualify as a big, bad secret – Quintura’s results pages feature the disclaimer “Powered by Yahoo XML” and a link to Yahoo itself – but it is a bit of a letdown that the site depends so heavily on another company. Quintura’s most unique feature, then, is its brand new interface.

Here’s where that “see and find” bit comes in; results don’t appear in nice, neat lists. Instead, they sort of float against a white background, and if you idle your mouse cursor over a word or phrase, a few more results will appear. The obsessive-compulsive in me doesn’t love this style of presentation (which the company has dubbed “the Quintura Cloud”), but it does have its uses.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington noted one of them. “Like Clusty, I find Quintura to be useful for research or browsing based search where I am trying to find more information on a given topic,” he wrote. Arrington’s even become a repeat user, adding, “After testing it, I find that I’ve been back a few times . . . .”

It remains to be seen how many followers the new user interface can win, however. Quintura’s dependence on Yahoo is something of a mark against it, and the company’s “About Us” section isn’t likely to impress anyone with its outdated information and slightly desperate plea.

“Quintura, which will launch community-powered online search engine services in early 2006, looks for significant venture capital funding,” it proclaims.

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What does it do? You search on something, say “Amsterdam” and it presents a tag-cloud, built with Flash, that shows you other possibilities around that query.

Yakov Sadchikov, founder, told me that Quintura has gotten popular among SEO types because it shows you keywords that other methods don’t show you. I’ve played with it a bit and it sure is an interesting new way to search.

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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It is exceptional for discovering keyword relationships and digging deeply through a category.

I added a link to Quintura results on my keyword research tool.

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Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
Threadwatch community.

I’ve found two:

Quintura. Has a cool new UI. Here’s a demo. (You can try it out, but it requires a download and install of a client application). I find that this is a bit frustrating to use. I like iterating through many searches that are subsets of the first search and getting back to try a new search isn’t very intuitive. But, once you get used to it this is a really cool way to search cause it shows you the other possible choices.

Kosmix. This afternoon I talked with their executive team after getting out of the Entrepreneur event. I asked them what Google does better. Most things it turns out. But they found a really important place where they are dramatically better than Google. Where? Whenever you have an open-ended search that has no “right” answers. For instance, search Google for “Diabetes” and you’ll get 10 answers alright, but they are rarely useful results. Kosmix gives a lot better grouping of answers. Update: Kosmix’ Kevin Ota tells me they’ll turn on their engine with a better UI on February 7 (and a bunch of new features when they ship it officially at the Demo conference).

Is search done? Not according to these two companies.

Or, ask Gary Price of Search Engine Watch. He just linked to TVEyes that does a new keyword search of TV News Content and other video stuff.

Are you seeing other companies do cool things in the search world?

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …