Learn and Utilise Advanced Keyword Selection

2. Learn and Utilise Advanced Keyword Selection

This has been covered over and over again, but it is a very important element and the importance of ongoing research is very important to stay ahead of the competition. There are several tools out there, most of which are free, or offer free trials. I typically use several different tools.

Google Trends – According to Google “Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it.”

This is great if you are in an industry that has seasonal traffic. This identifies the seasonality of keyword searches. Google also has a keyword tool that will take a large list of keywords and when filtered by Search Volume Trends gives you a list that contains 12 months data and when the highest month of occurrence was.

KeywordDiscovery collects search term data from just over 180 search engines world wide. Their database contains approximately 32 billion searches from the last 12 months. Their Premium Database contains over 600 million results.

What I like is that they cover a wider demographic than the other paid tools available. Although the new Wordtracker UK version is a great addition for our company, being that it is based in the UK, KeywordDiscovery seems to be a better choice for those in a European market. Major differences are the databases that they pull their results from. WordTracker uses 4 or 5 sources (e.g. MetaCrawler, DogPile and Overture), while KeywordDiscovery uses Google, Yahoo Groups, DMOZ, MSN, Teoma, Miva and over 50 other databases. They also pull from databases in Japan, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada, Germany, Australia, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, India, and Norway. In the UK alone they use 11 different engines including google.co.uk.

SpyFu is a neat (and free) tool that can eliminate keywords that you may think are good to use, but may not convert well. It is a tool for Google Adwords and if you are trying to determine an estimated spend for individual keywords.

I use this keyword tool to see what companies are bidding on terms related to my terms. Chances are, if they are bidding on it, then its probably converting. This helps me eliminate broad terms as well (e.g. parts, cars). I guess you can use other tools to base KEI (keyword effectiveness index) on and do close to the same thing, but SpyFu makes it a little easier and faster.

It will also show you misspelled terms. Of course many of these tools have this function but again, this tool does it quicker. Here’s an example of what SpyFu came up with when I searched for ‘advanced auto parts’;

advaced auto parts
advancd auto parts
advancded auto parts
advence auto parts
advenced auto parts
after market auto parts
aftermarket auto parts
anvance auto parts

So it doesn’t just show ergonomic misspellings, it also shows ‘stoopid’ misspellings.

HitTail is a tool that I hold near and dear to my heart because I had some of input into its development, and they added a few features that I requested while using it for Pay Per Click keyword research. (Well, that and the fact the tool saved my client £90,000 a year).

The tool was originally designed to do what log files can basically do, but quicker and easier. HitTail gathers the keyword and keyword phrases that brought your visitors to the site and graphs them to identify niche phrases that have high KEI so that you can use them in articles or online content. They added an xml export feature that I love because I can use it while creating adwords campaigns and save myself a ton of time.

The reason I use it for keyword research is 3-fold;
1. It’s quicker and easier than log file data mining
2. I can quickly identify the long 4-6 keyword phrases to use in my content
3. I get create adwords campaigns quickly

Search engine users are become more savvy and their knowledge increases every day. They know that the more words they use to target their query the better the results will be. I see 20-30% of my visitors using 4+ keyword strings. Two years ago it was around 2-3.

So to finish this section off I’ll say that this is probably one of the most important database that you will build. Spend a few days and dollars/pounds on it.