Tag Archives: keyword research

Google Insight Search – What can it be used for?

Most of the times website owners forget doing some basic keywords research, whether we are talking about finding good keywords for PPC campaigns or even for organic optimisation. Google, as always, has yet another great tool for helping us in this matter called Google Insight Search. Google Insight Search reveals the search trends based on several criteria, when “asked” about different keywords or keyphrases.

This service is just a fantastic free one for companies trying to optimise and promote popular keywords related to their specific niche topic and also see which ones are on a “going up” or “going down” trend. What makes Google Insight Search truly an outstanding tool is the fact it reveals keywords trends based on the course of several years, thus getting a nice picture of whether it worth promoting or not a certain industry keyword.

This tool also helps you compare search volumes patterns based on regions, period of time and more other. Using it is a very easy task: just enter a search term you are trying to see whether it worth or not, choose your country and hit enter.
Suppose you do a search for the phrase “seo company” in UK, in the last years in England. Note that in the last month the sentence suffered a decline in terms of searching but also there are some relevant keywords that can be used instead of that. Moreover, the tool shows you that London is a great city to target related to that keyword while most searches are performed on that location.

Whether you are just starting a new campaign or working on a previous one, it might be a good start to use this tool in your SEO campaign and step-up with the right foot in website optimisation.

Avoid these mistakes when doing your keyword research

As we talked in our previous posts, keyword research is one of the most important aspect for a website to have success. This does not mean that only by selecting the right keywords and building optimised content upon its the site will aim to the top of search engines without any other work as link building, but this is a crucial aspect in any campaign.

These being said, here are the most common mistakes webmasters usually do. Avoid them and your way to the top should be without to many barriers.

1. Single word keywords

We all aim to rank on first page for keywords like dating, web design, acne or any other popular terms these days, however one thing is sure : those keywords are for the big fishes. Without an incredible big budget and maybe years of work (and this does not imply 100% first page rankings) no one stands a chance. Long tail keywords are a great way for faster great rankings and with the changes brought by Google Instant going for long tail ones could be the smartest thing a marketer can do.

2. Competition ? What competition ?

Not analysing the competition before selecting the keywords one will promote is a common mistake. However, there are some webmasters that are analysing the competition but the wrong way. Are you searching for under 500,000 broad results ? Below 10,000 “” results ? Intitle : “” inurl : “” ? Do you check each competitors’ from the first page backlinks ?

3. I do not need any keyword research !

This is probably the worst way someone could go with. Just choosing a niche and not considering keywords to build content upon (and I am not talking about those single word keywords) will get you nowhere. Analysing and then choosing the right keywords to promote can literally change the way your site appears in the search engines’ results.

4. It has 40,000 searches/month – goldmine !

But broad results…Broad results are the most misleading results a webmaster could find. Always choose the exact match and you will see how numbers drastically decrease. And by drastically, I mean there are keywords with 10,000 searches each month in broad and only 80-100 EXACT searches monthly. Now that is a big difference, right ?

5. Buying keywords are best for monetising

Let’s consider you found a keyword with good numbers of searching and low-medium competition. However that one might bring you visitors but no money (as from CPC, CPA etc). Why ?you might ask. Because it is not a buying keyword. Let’s think for example, someone searching for paper history, is he interested in buying something or just reading when the paper appeared for the first time then leave that site ?

These might sound as basics of keyword research but many folks are failing in Internet marketing because of these simple mistakes. Keyword research should be seen as something as important as building the website itself or promoting it in different online/offline environments.

How to find the best keywords from the list and promote them ?

We talked in our latest post about the importance of keyword research, how to create a massive list of keywords related to someone’s business and how to establish the principal keywords that the site will be build upon. So now that we have the whole list, what is next to be done in order to get rid of keywords with high competition and actually concentrate on those easier to conquer ?

Even though this looks like a titanic work, it definitely must be completed to have a good start for the online business. And indeed, it requires some time but can be easily outsourced if the funds allow this. However, here are the steps anyone should follow after creating the list.

1. Check each and any keyword’s competition

There are many ways of doing this and each should choose what method suits him. Some internet marketers claim that under 500,000 results for a keyword or phrase ( not in quotes ) is quite an easy to conquer keyword. Others choose the method intitle : “keyword” inurl : “keyword” , again, lowest is better. For an un-quoted search you should also check the first 10-20 competitors’ PR and links, there are several ways of doing this with free tools. Of course, when the first let’s say 7 competitors have massive numbers of links and PR over 4 it is almost obvious that competing with its will be tough.

2. Group the keywords and write on its

Group the keywords based on the word/phrase they have in common. When this step is done, try to create content that fits your chosen keywords, usually more articles/content for a single keyword. This should be done constantly, try to create unique content. It is always better to create less content but with higher quality than poor content but in bunch.

3. Create website structure

Keywords must be used not only in content, but also in meta tags, meta keywords, page description, website title and so on. Stay away from keyword stuffing, this worked in the past, now will only bring problems to a new or even well-established site.

4. Promote the keywords

This is usually the hardest part of the job. Choosing the proper anchor text with the proper link and getting quality backlinks with the desired « features » is not such an easy task. Usually people promote keywords through forums signatures, blog comments, article marketing, press releases and so on. Diversity is the gold word here, try to get links from as many places you can. Do not spam, contribute to the sites you get links from and all should be fine.

These are just four steps anyone should be following as « to do » after keyword research, of course more could be added but the major idea is there. Each webmaster chooses his way from this point and work to rank as high as possible for the targeted keywords. It all depends on the amount of work one will bring into the game.

How to find proper keywords relevant to your business

Whether one is starting a new online business based on an ecommerce website or the website is already established, proper keyword research is crucial. Of course, there are a lot of methods of doing this and webmasters usually apply what worked well in the past, based on previous experience. However, chances of getting noticed on the online environment are quite low if keyword research is not a part of anyone’s strategy.

First and foremost, you should establish the principal keywords your business is related with, let’s take for example a company that sells knives. The major keywords would be knife, knives, folding knives, pocket knives, kitchen knives and so on. But again, this only depends on what the company sells while it would be unnecessary to use pocket knives when it does not have in its inventory this type of knives. So picking up keywords from own knowledge about the products would be first thing anyone doing keyword research should do. Choose keywords that best characterize the business/services/products.

Second step would be to create a large list of related keywords and this can be done in various ways. The most important one is by using the Google Adwords : Keyword Tool while it is the most updated tool and, well, you are optimising a website for Google so its database should be used first. Using it is not so difficult but there is a trick of getting way more keywords than using it in a normal matter. First of all, you may want to swich it to its previous interface ( the current interface was released a couple of months ago ). Take each word you found in step 1, add it to the box and hit « get keyword ideas ». The keyword « kitchen knives » generates 131 related keywords and another 69 keywords to consider. Add all of them to the database, and here comes the real trick. After you have added its, a list on the right part of the screen gets filled with selected keywords, next you should take each keyword listed there and do the same with it. You will get keywords listed before but also new keywords ideas you might use. Add all again, repeat the procedure until you get hundreds of keywords to consider.

A step most webmasters jump over is to use Thesaurus.com database for synonyms. Synonyms are also great for some products/services while for others are not. However, if synonyms you consider related to your business are shown, copy its and do the step above with Google Keyword Tool, that should generate another dozens of new keywords.

Yahoo Answers is a good place to find out what people are looking about your product, in our case kitchen knives. By browsing the questions you might find patterns that can help you create content that answers their questions.

Last, but not least, competition websites. These are goldmine for new keywords idea, is like you hired someone to do the job, you just pick up the fruits. Check at least first 20 competitors’ keywords, add its to the master list and if something new, you might want to take them again through the whole process described above with the Keyword Tool.For established websites with some years behind, a good method is to use Awstats and Alexa method for new keywords.

Now that we have the main keywords, secondary keywords made up of hundreds of its, how do we know which one to target, how to find gold keywords and how to properly promote its for prospects and search engines ? This is the subject on a new article, so stay tuned if you would like to find out how to use the massive list of keywords created. Care to share other methods for proper keyword research, feel free to leave a comment below, would be glad to share ideas with other webmasters.