DIY Internet Marketing/ pt 17 Keyword Tools

                       

 Addendum to last month's article "The Theory Behind Keyword Research"
 Competitive Analysis
Your competitors will probably have invested time and effort into learning how their own customers think, 
and how to best approach them. So should you.
Your analysis should include:
1. Reviewing competitors' websites, looking for keywords/phrases they use, that compete with yours
2. Record the non-brand terms they use
3.Examine articles they have been published on websites, other than their own
4. Read what the media says about them

KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS  

(Keyword Search Data via Search Engines)

I'm outlining the overall description of the methods used to research keywords. 
 I suggest working with the actual tools to learn how learn how to get the most out of them. 
Keep in mind that all keyword search tools are based on limited data. Because each tool will 
give you different results for the  same search term, you should regard each tool as a good way 
to get a general comparison of search terms.


Blog Search Counts
Blog search data is valuable for finding hot topics and keywords in the blogosphere & social media. 
Most data is temporary, so if it's more than 3-4 months old, it's probably out of the blog index. 
For example, 1,130,000 results returned for the blog search for jingles, versus 12,100,00 when 
a web search was used for the same term.

 Blog Search

 Internet Search
 


Related Terms
Most search engines also give you "related" terms
eg. "whales" could produce a list like: whale watching, Pictures, Blue Whales, Songs etc.
Using " * "  in front of the search term gives you common terms/phrases that precede or 
follow a given search term.

Frequency of Recent Usage
With Google's date range operator, you can narrow search 
down to past day, week month, year etc. using the "Advanced Search" mode or do regular 
search and add these operators at end of URL:

8as_qdr=d   past 24 hours

8as_qdr=d4 past 4 days

8as_qdr=w  past week

8as_qdr=w5 past 5 weeks

8as_qdr=m6  past 6 months

8as_qdr=y2  past 2 years

 Google News & Yahoo are good for finding people who are putting out press releases/getting 
news coverage on specific search terms. 

Google's Adwords Keyword Tool & Traffic Estimator
( https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal)

Provides related terms, search volumes estimates, search trends, & ad costs estimates a for 
both URLs  & keywords you enter.


Traffic Estimator
You must have an Adwords account  to use Traffic Estimator
Located in the Google Adwords, it gives you the potential click-throughs you may see on your 
site as a results of using  a particular keyword, including search volume,cost per click,ad positions, 
clicks/day, cost per day.
The cost info tells you how competitive a keyword is.
Types of Searches in Traffic Estimator
Broad Match: your ad will appear in search results when any of the words in your keyword phrase 
that are used in a search query
Exact  match: brackets around the (keyword)
Phrase  match: put keywords in "quotes " your ad shows only phrases that contain anything that 
contain your keyword.
Negative match: Put negative sign/dash in front of keyword, means your term does not apply to your 
services & your ad won't show for the corresponding search


Yahoo Search Marketing  
You need to be a Yahoo Search Marketing customer to use it. It only gives keyword relative 
popularity, not actual search numbers.
Also very good for brainstorming keywords. Gets its' info from Yahoo queries.

Microsoft's adCenter keyword Generation Tool ( free)
Generates keyword suggestions based on your keyword/URL.
The  CPC (cost per click) the is an indication of the competition for the word is.
Gets its' info from Bing.
Good for generating keywords for your target subject or for any URL,
including your competitors.
Gives demographic data as well.


Wordtracker   (http://www.wordtracker.com)
Cost between 10-300/year besides a limited free tool.

 FEATURES

 1.Keyword Researcher displays :
i) The most popular search terms that include the keywords that you entered
ii) Number of searches/day
iii) Predicts how many searches are performed in a day
The Evaluate tab lets you analyze competing search engine listings such as Google,Microsoft, Yahoo etc.

2. Keyword Universe
Gives keywords that are related/synonymous  to/with your search.
Eg. SEO = internet marketing

3. Full Search
Gives a list of similar keywords, plus the number of times those keywords appeared in the meta tags of 200 
related web pages.

4. Keyword Projects
Stores up to 5 of your  keyword research projects


5. Reports
i) Provides  the top 1000 search terms for past 48 hours
ii) & Top 1000 terms over last 90 days


6. Free keyword Suggestion Tool  ( http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com)
Gives you total number of searches done in last 90 days on any word, but because it's data 
sources are very limited don't rely on it for precise measurements, onlyas an indication as to 
which are more popular than others


Because Wordtracker has a limited data source( Dogpile & Metacrawler, accounting for 
1% of all web searches) it's good for getting a general idea of popularity of terms.
There's a paid & free version.


Keyword Discovery.com  (Keyworddiscovery.com)
FEATURES:
1.Keyword Search
i) Gives most popular search terms along with your term
ii) A search count on those words in last 12 months


2.Query
Shows terms related to your search word


3.Searches
Number of times each term searched over past 12 months


4.Occurrences
Estimates number of pages where each search term appears


5.Key Effectiveness Indicator  KEI
Measures the value of search term.
It factors the number of times a term has been searched compared to the number of 
web pages that contain same term.
Be aware that experts don't recommend using KEI because the results do not correlate to
 the competition level for a term


6.Predicted Daily
Number of searches across the web


7.Industry Keywords
Tracks popular terms used in various industries


8.Spelling Mistake Research
i) gives spelling variations of term
ii) number of searches for your keyword
iii) keyword results for your term


9.Seasonal Search Terms
i) market share of which search engines were used for search query
ii) shows search trends for each month


10.Related Keywords
Type in "related:[keyword] " or "crawl:[keyword]"  gives you words that are related to this term

11.Keyword Density Analysis
Tells you the density percentage of keywords for each URL you provide.
Good for spying on competitors.
Don't rely on it to judge a page's keyword targeting as it can be misleading, because search
engines use a far more sophisticated analysis of keywords.


12.Domain Researcher Tool
Search available domains that are based on popular keyword searches
as they have high traffic potential
Shows how many users have searched for that URL


13. COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS (requires a subscription)

Reports include:
a. Link Intelligence ...identifies which links are sending traffic to your competitors
b. Search Term  Intelligence ...identifies which search terms are sending traffic to your competitors
c. Search Engine  Intelligence ...identifies which search engines are sending traffic to your competitors
d. PPC campaign  Intelligence ...identifies which search terms your competitors are bidding on
e. Referrer  Intelligence ..provides info about specific sites that  are referring traffic to your competitors
f.Popularity Index..tells you how many unique sessions  your competitors' . gets
g.Ranking Report...tells you which terms competitors are ranking for & the rank of these terms
h. Meta keywords,analyzes competitors' meta keywords
i.Competitive Intelligence Executive Report, give every Competitive Intelligence  Report available


14. Keyword Suggestion Tool   free & subscription
Its' data source is limited, but it's still useful


Google Trends  - free (google.com/trends)
You can see Google's estimate of which cites,regions,languages performed largest  number 
of searches for a keyword

Hitwise (hitwise.com)
Gives information on search terms of your competitors.
as well as market specific results of how people search locally.
Very expensive 20K plus.

Enquisite Optimizer.com   (enquisite.com) fee involved
Tells you which  long tail terms are bringing in traffic & which ones are leading to conversion.

DIY Internet Marketing/Theory Behind Keyword Research

Theory Behind Keyword Research 

Keyword research allows us to produce products, services & content that web searchers are actively seeking. To establish the value of a keyword you must make hypotheses, test & retest.

The Long Tail of the Keyword Curve:
The popular keywords (eg. 5000 searches a day etc.)only account for 30% of all searches. The remaining "long tail", lessor used/unique keywords, comprise 70% of  all searches.

Keyword Research Steps
1 make a list of 1-3-word, phrases, for your product/service
2  find synonyms for these phrases
3 create classifications for all areas of interest in your industry
4 think of higher level terms, of which your services/products may be subsets of
5  extract key phrases from your own website
6 visit industry association & media sites to see what phrases they use for your 
   topic area
7 list all your brand terms
8 list all of your products
9 think what a potential customer would type into a search engine
10 ask outsiders what they would type in
11 look at your own web analytics to see what terms people are already using
13 review competitor's sites for keywords
14 research non-brand terms that your competitors use
15 check out articles written by your competitors
16 what does media say about your competitors

Do-it-Yourself Internet Marketing/Who are your Top Competitors ?

(I've been away for a while working frantically on my new website and I'm back now, ready to continue sharing the info from "The Art of SEO".)


        Who are your Top Competitors ?

Your top competitors will be found in the top half of page one of the your search engine results for the keywords you type in.
More important is finding out how competent your top competitors are at SEO.

This is done by answering these questions

i) Are all their web pages, including product pages, in the search engines' data base ? Use netconcepts.com/urlcheck or theirdomain.com to find out
A site with only a small percentage of its' data in Google is most likely unfriendly to search spiders.

ii) Does each page have keyword-rich titles(title tags) You can discover a sites page titles in Google or Yahoo by using yourcompetitor.com

iii) Do the product and category pages have high page rank scores

iv) Is anchor text throughout the site, particularly in navigation, keyword-rich?

 v) Are they being penalized for copyright infringes?
     Find out with  copyscape.com

vi) Are they spamming with doorway passages ?


Uncovering Their Secrets

1. Keywords.
Find page title in the blue bar at top of your webrowser.
Look in the "view source" of your browser under "meta name".

2. Who's linking to their popular pages

3. Examine the"cached" version of your rivals pages to see what the search engines see, as compared to what the public sees. This button is next to the search results in Google.

4.To get info on rivals' traffic, use compete.com , quantcast.com, alexa.com, http://trends.google.com/websites?q=(name of site)
Paid ones are comscore.com and  hitwise.com

You've probably noticed that the title of this series is changed to "Internet Marketing". That's because my research tells me that "internet marketing" is  used far more as a search term.